I, Spy
by Mr. Cereal
Summary: A decade and a half after the Jinchuriki War, Kirigakure genin Haru infiltrates Konoha to save her parents. As the clouds of war gather once again in the horizon, Haru finds herself a pawn in a treacherous game of ninja espionage. OC
1. Enter Mizumoto Haru

_She shuddered at the foot of a clump of tall reeds, not only at the cold wind, but at the utter and unnatural silence of the marsh. The mist that shrouded the marsh was still and thick. As she cowered where she stood, a sudden cutting breeze blew through the swamp, clearing the fog slightly. The breeze brought with it a slight metallic tang and the din of a battle raging behind the impenetrable screen of mist. "Mother! Father!" she cried into the fog, terrified._

* * *

The torrential rain pelted Kirigakure, as it always did this time of the year. Quite unlike the rains of the eponymous Amegakure on the mainland, the rains of Kirigakure were savage and freezing, with cutting winds and the rain leavened with the occasional hailstone.

Mizumoto Haru balanced herself precariously on the beams of the hall and inched forward. The beam was old, and creaked when she shifted her weight. She kept her eyes on the hatch. She had found the hatch last week, when she was looking for mushrooms that commonly grew along the insides of roofs. There was a sort of supply cache behind the hatch, full of dried foods and soldier pills.

The first time, she didn't take a lot (there was only so much you could cram in a genin outfit), but she came back with a small sack a few days later, and raided the place with glee. Haru was aware that she was stealing, and the penalty if she was caught, but she didn't anticipate losing much sleep over it. Unlike other genin, Haru had to support herself on a genin's salary since her parents' death. The salary of a Genin had always been lean, moreso in these times of famine and downsizing.

Once her sack was full to bursting, Haru shifted on her perch, preparing to wriggle her way back out the small skylight she'd entered from and head home. Just as she was preparing to hoist herself up onto the roof, the door burst open, allowing the shrieking of the rainstorm and occasional flashes of lightning to filter in. Amid the cracks of lightning and the booms of thunder, she could hear two male voices, arguing.

_Arguing...about what?_ she thought, keeping very still. Her survival instinct warred with her curiosity. It wasn't that uncommon to hear adults arguing. Political strife seemed to do that to people. She, personally, was more interested in paying her bills and keeping food on the table, but it was good to keep in touch.

"We need to act now! This is too good to miss, Mizuri-senpai – if we let this window of opportunity pass, we may not get the chance again in a long time!" Haru recognized the speaker with a jolt. _Kaiyou-sensei!_ He was a veteran jounin to whom Haru and two others had been assigned to only a few weeks before.

"I know that," the jounin called Mizuri snapped. His weather-beaten face was distorted into a look of frustration as he raked a hand through his sandy blonde hair. "Do you think I disagree? But we need to tread carefully here. Our annexation of Wave has already made the Land of Fire very wary. Konohagakure-" Mizuri held up a hand to silence Kaiyou-sensei, who had opened his mouth to speak. "Even now they still have far more shinobi than we do. If war does break out-"

Kaiyou-sensei snorted scornfully. "Then let them come. Numbers are nothing! A single Kiri shinobi could take on five, ten of them! Most of them are green, untested in combat, unlike us Kiri shinobi."

"They have the Konoha Eleven."

Kaiyou-sensei had no reply to that. The Konoha Eleven were renowned around the world for their prowess in battle. Charismatic and talented, they had led the armies of Konohagakure from victory to victory. It was also left unsaid that fighting Konoha also meant fighting Suna, which, if nothing else, meant the Kazekage. The Demon of the Sands was at least as dreaded as all the Konoha Eleven put together.

The jounin Mizuri pressed on in a more conciliatory tone. "Look, we can't risk war with Konoha and Suna just yet. But I agree that we must do something. My plan for infiltrating Konoha would-"

At this moment, Haru lost her footing, and slipped on the mildewed surface of the beam. Instead of the cold, hard floor, she felt a vice grip on her throat, suspending her in the air, cutting off her airway. "My, my…… what's this?" Mizuri drawled.

Her sensei scowled incredulously at her. "Haru?"

Mizuri raised an eyebrow. "One of your brats?"

Kaiyou-sensei nodded tersely by way of acknowledgement.

"So you're the one who's been ransacking this supply closet. I wondered which jounin had the audacity to pilfer from the village." Haru felt Mizuri's grip tighten ever so slightly, constricting her windpipe. Bone-chilling cold crept from his hand up her throat. Haru grasped desperately at Mizuri's arm.

"The penalty for theft of military supplies from Kirigakure is execution," Mizuri said, "without court martial." He smiled cruelly, revealing rows of sharp filed teeth.

Haru's heart beat erratically Summary execution....she should have been dead already. She was guilty of theft, Mizuri was her commanding officer, there was no reason for her to still be breathing. Already struggling for breath, she managed to squeeze out, "Cut… the crap already… what do y-you want?"

"You have some raw talent in stealth and concealment. You seem to be an excellent candidate for what I have in mind," said Mizuri.

Haru opened her mouth to protest, but couldn't manage more than a strangled rasp. Instead she glared at Mizuri with watery eyes, considering the implications mutely.

Mizuri seemed satisfied at her silent acquiescence, and let go. She hit the ground, gasping for much needed air. "Good. You have three hours to prepare. Report here at twenty-three-hundred hours. You know where the rations are," he added dryly over his shoulder. For a brief moment, Kaiyou stared at her with an inscrutable expression, and then hurried after Mizuri.

* * *

Mizuri and Kaiyou ran through the damp catacombs silently.

Kaiyou broke the silence. "Are you sure about this? She's only a genin—a new one at that."

Mizuri's eyes darted a fraction towards Kaiyou. "Why, you're not suffering an attack of _compassion_, are you?"

"No. I'm referring to the problems that her inexperience may cause, especially for a delicate operation such as this." The shadows cast by the sparse flickering torches concealed Kaiyou's expression.

Mizuri paused briefly, as if to consider a thought. "Contrary to what you may think, her being a new genin is a good thing. I've been planning this for a while. The unexpected appearance of the girl was only a bonus. Instead of seeding lots of spies into enemy's lower ranks and hope that some avoid detection like we've done in the past, my plan requires that we send a contained two-shinobi team. One a genin to infiltrate the ranks of Konoha, while the other, an experienced jounin, to coordinate the mission from within Konoha itself.

"The plan was to use a genin with more experience, but the girl, for our purposes, is even better. She is inexperienced enough to blend in with new recruits, and for any progress she's made in the last few weeks to be mistaken for potential. But unlike the average genin, this girl seems to be a natural in the art of concealment, and she has some nerve, which is invaluable to us."

Mizuri turned slightly towards Kaiyou. "I thought maybe the part of the coordinator would be filled by you. I should be forthright to you: the chances of success are slim, and, needless to say, operating deep in enemy territory is uniquely dangerous."

They had reached the Mizukage's Office. Mizuri turned to face Kaiyou completely. "It is a top-secret A-rank mission, probably going to be one of the most difficult you've undertaken. Should you fall, there will be no one to mourn your passing. But the success of the mission means war, and for you, my friend, that means almost certain elevation to the Mizu Advisory Council."

Kaiyou's eyes glittered in the torch-lit gloom. Mizuri had hit the spot. The Mizu Advisory Council was one of the highest authorities in Kirigakure, governing every aspect of the hidden village. It was topped only by the Mizukage, and the Mizukage himself (or herself) was traditionally picked from the ranks of the Council.

"It is my honour to accept the assignment, senpai."

Mizuri fished a sealed scroll out of his flak jacket, dispelled the seal and handed it over to Kaiyou. Like all mission briefings of A-rank and above, they were marked TOP SECRET. "Rendezvous with the girl at the stated time," Mizuri said.

"Yes, sir."


	2. Land of Waves

Haru ran all the way back to her meager living quarters, braving the thunderstorm, oblivious to the pelting rain and hail. Her mind was a storm of its own, feelings and thoughts ricocheting off each other as one ludicrous plan formed after another. She reached her quarters, sopping wet, almost without realizing it.

She had no time. She hadn't had time since the moment Kaiyou and Mizuri had walked into that supply cache. She didn't know what they had in store for her, but she could guess. They planned to infiltrate Konoha, and who better to do that than an unassuming genin? It was suicidal and with the threat of execution hanging over her, there was no way she could remain in Kiri.

She reached for her rucksack, ready to stuff it with supplies and a few essentials when she froze. Something was not right... a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature swept up her back as she slowly withdrew her hand, reaching instead for her kunai.

"Oh, don't worry, you're safe – for now," a voice said in the dark.

Her head snapped in the direction of the voice, her kunai still at the ready. "Kaiyou!" she snarled, not at all reassured.

"I must admit, I was rather pleased that you and I are of a kind. You see, I too have a gift for erasing my presence."

"What do you want?"

"Nothing. Just checking in. See, if I were you, I'd be tempted to run," Kaiyou said, leaning non-chalantly against a wall. "…though of course, you weren't planning that, were you?" he finished silkily. Haru glared at him, not really caring if he could see it.

"And by the way, it'll be either Kaiyou-taicho or Kaiyou-sensei, as I _am_ still your commanding officer. Take your pick."

Haru did not retort. She was thinking fast. If she could get to the door, she could disappear into the storm. In a split second, she dashed for the door, forgoing supplies and clothes in favor of freedom. She was fast, but Kaiyou moved between her and the door with blinding speed. He delivered an open-handed palm strike to her solar plexus, knocking the wind out of her. As Haru lay on the floor gasping for breath, a tendril of water flowed down Kaiyou's arm and coalesced into a thin watery blade.

"No need to be so hasty, we will be departing soon enough," Kaiyou said smoothly. The watery blade pulsed with latent chakra. Haru understood his threat perfectly. She could only grit her teeth.

As Haru got up from the floor, Kaiyou made a quick slash at Haru's forehead. A horizontal gash appeared on her forehead protector, between the flowing water symbol of Kirigakure. "You are now officially dead. Whether your death is one of a traitor or a hero, I leave to you."

* * *

"Come on, get up!" Kaiyou snapped impatiently at a slow Haru, "We still have some distance to cover before sunrise." They had traveled all night on a fast, unmarked clipper from Kirigakure north to an archipelago which Haru assumed to be the Land of Waves.

She had sat herself down on the dewy ground, and was glaring at Kaiyou. "Forgive me for not being overly enthusiastic about going to die in a foreign land."

Kaiyou leaned on the innocuous-looking staff he was carrying. "Look at it this way: if you die, you will be commemorated as one of the saviors of Kirigakure. That's what we're doing, you know. Saving Kiri from extinction."

"That's nice, but I prefer to live," Haru shot back, stabbing at a patch of moss underneath her sandals.

"I'm sure it would make your parents proud..." Kaiyou said, turning his back on her. "Think about it-- their only child, a Hero of Kirigakure. Only a genin and she was willing to give her all for the good of the village."

"What good does that do me? They're dead."

"That's what you think."

Haru froze, her mouth working soundlessly as Kaiyou moved further up the bank. She scrambled to her feet, sprinting to catch up. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Kaiyou smiled humourlessly. "Ah, I see I've gotten your attention. See, I happen to know that they're rotting in a damp, submarine prison somewhere in Kiri-"

"Cut the crap, _taicho_!" Haru literally spat out the last word. "They're dead!"

"If that's the way you want to think," Kaiyou shrugged. "I wonder, did you actually witness them die? Did you see their bodies?"

Watching Haru closely, Kaiyou was smugly pleased to see a thread of doubt start to wrap itself around her thoughts. "I'm making you an offer. Be a good little spy, and when this assignment is done I'll see to it that they're released. If you fail, or betray Kiri, however…… well, let's just say that Mummy and Daddy may look forward to the personal attentions of a knife in the dark."

Haru shot up. "You wouldn't dare."

"You wouldn't know." The waning moonlight glinted off Kaiyou's unnaturally sharp teeth as his face split in a chilling grin. Haru shuddered, and looked away. He had done his job, the seed of doubt was planted. Haru had thought herself an orphan for longer than she cared to remember. She would give anything to be able to see her parents again.

* * *

They moved further along the coast, keeping off the road as harried-looking families hurried along it, their entire lives strapped to their backs. As they neared what looked like a town, Haru spotted groups of uniformed soldiers stationed along the road at regular intervals from inside the foliage. From the symbol on their tunics, they were from the Land of Water.

Kaiyou signaled Haru to stay down. _What?_ He indicated for her to move away from the road. "What's going on? Weren't those-" Haru began when they were a safe distance away from the road.

"Yes, yes, they were Water soldiers," Kaiyou said irritably. "A few weeks ago, our fool daimyo ordered the departure of all Kiri shinobi from the Land of Water, under the insistence of the daimyo of the Land of Fire."

"So we're not actually supposed to be here," Haru said.

"No, we are not, but…" Kaiyou shrugged. "We are shinobi. We do things our own way, whether our dear daimyo would admit it or not."

As they continued away from the road, Kaiyou said, "I don't suppose I have to tell you to regard any agent of the Land of Water as a hostile. The secrecy of our mission is paramount." They were heading towards a column of smoke rising from the ground. As they neared, Haru spotted a patrol team of three Water soldiers huddled around a fire, on the edge of an abandoned village. Kaiyou stopped and turned to Haru. "Hand me your forehead protector."

Haru hesitated. "What?"

"It won't do you much good now anyway. _Hand me your forehead protector._"

When Haru reluctantly untied it from her forehead and handed it over Kaiyou pointed in the direction of the soldiers. "Wipe them out."

Haru scowled in the direction of the fire. "But what-" she began to ask-

But Kaiyou was already gone.

Haru considered the task. In the few weeks she'd been a genin of Kirigakure, she'd mostly been doing D-rank missions—not even real missions, in Haru's opinion. Even so, with careful planning and a little luck, she should be able to take them all out without undue fuss.

Haru reached down to the shinobi pouch at her belt for a kunai, but felt her hand close on nothing. A surge of panic washed over Haru. That pouch had held all her kunai and shuriken. Fearing the worst, Haru felt for the oilskin pocket where she hid her explosive tags. Her fingers brushed flayed leather-ends. It had been cut as well. _Kaiyou… you bastard._

There was a whizzing sound and a quiet thunk as a single kunai embedded itself in the trunk of a tree.

Haru gritted her teeth but resigned herself. Closing her eyes, she drew upon memories of her parents for strength. She took a deep breath and drew her focus inwards, imagining her mental self shrink and shrink until she disappeared. When Haru opened her eyes again she moved stealthily into a thicket right behind one of the soldiers and waited for an opportunity to strike.

Haru didn't have to wait long. One of them stood up from around the now-sputtering fire and muttered, "I gotta take a shit." The other two looked up and grunted an acknowledgement. _Now's the time!_ Bursting out of the thicket, Haru grabbed the head of the first soldier from behind and slit his exposed throat. The man rasped wetly, and fell limp.

Abstractly, she realized it was the first time she had ever killed someone, but she did not have time to dwell on that as the dead soldier's teammate picked up his halberd and swung it at her. She ducked, but the soldier utilized the momentum of the first slash, and his next attack came in fast, slicing at her torso. Haru barely had time to block the halberd with her kunai. Haru managed to deflect it, but the force of the cut sent the kunai flying from her hands.

Haru stumbled backwards to avoid the long arc of the soldier's halberd. As Haru felt the faint heat of the dying campfire behind her, she was seized with a sudden idea. Gritting her teeth, she thrust her hand into the dying flames and grabbed a handful of embers. The embers crumbled in her hand as she held them. Before the embers burned her hand, she flung the hot ashes in the soldier's face.

The soldier let go of his halberd in surprise and clawed at his eyes, howling obscenities. Seeing the opening, Haru closed the distance between her and the soldier quickly, depriving him of the advantage of range bestowed by the length of the halberd. However, the soldier soon recovered his composure, and started to batter Haru with his bare fists. Haru blocked blow after crude blow partially with her arms, but she gave ground, realizing that even though the man wasn't particularly skilled, she wasn't likely to win a contest of strength. Instead, she retreated from the clearing, luring him into the forest.

When Haru had a tree behind her, she turned, ran up the tree with the aid of chakra. Doing a neat flip over the soldier's head, she landed behind him. Taking advantage of his momentary surprise, Haru grabbed his head and slammed it hard into the trunk. The foliage from above drifted down around her with each hit. It didn't take more than three or four blows before he fell limp in her arms. Haru dropped the bloodied body in disgust.

Haru was so absorbed in the melee that she did not immediately register the return of the other soldier, his pants still unbuckled. Haru noticed a makeshift club coming towards her head an instant too late to block it. As it connected with her skull, Haru felt a sharp pain, and stars blossomed in her vision. _Shit,_ she thought as she collapsed, unconscious.


	3. Double Edge

Haru's head felt on the verge of exploding. Moaning, she tried to move, and was rewarded by a fresh stab of pain.

"Don't move too much, now…" a soothing female voice told her. Haru opened her eyes weakly and saw a feminine silhouette looming over her. That figure started to mutter something else too, but the world swam and Haru lapsed into unconsciousness again.

--------------------

The recent turn of events, Sakana Kaiyou mused, were advantageous after all. He had been assessing Haru's abilities since they left Kiri, like any good commander. Her endurance and stealth were marginal, but the clincher would be her fighting skills. Everything else would work to her advantage in Konoha, but decent combat abilities were essential to the mission. By Kaiyou's estimation, with only a kunai she should have been able to eliminate maybe one of the soldiers before being overwhelmed. Kaiyou had been positioned and prepared to kill the remainder. She was, after all, only a two-week genin.

So he was surprised when Haru quickly took out one of them by ambush. Intrigued, he let her continue. The way she turned the tables on the second foe was inelegant and unpolished, but admittedly inspired. She was definitely her father's daughter, Kaiyou thought with some nostalgia. She was well on her way to defeating the last one when a moment of carelessness cost her the battle.

His attention focused on the fight, his guard was down when the Konoha shinobi tore through the clearing. He had barely enough time to conceal himself. It was pure luck that they didn't notice him and he wasn't foolish enough to think otherwise. He had not expected any Konoha shinobi in the Wave archipelago, though, he reflected, he probably should have anticipated that Konohagakure would do some reconnaissance of their own.

When the squad departed, carrying an unconscious Haru, Kaiyou initiated pursuit, sticking to the shadows in true shinobi fashion. _Konoha_, he sneered inwardly, _they're soft_. Kiri shinobi wouldn't have hesitated to abandon a civilian, or kill if his survival happened to be a liability to the mission.

Through the fog of annoyance in his mind, it dawned on him that this turn of events could be advantageous after all. She had a one-way ticket into the ranks of Konoha shinobi if she played her cards right. He grinned to himself. This just might work.

--------------------

"……Moegi, are you going to carry that kid around until she wakes up? We're moving so much slower because of her."

"It doesn't matter anyways, the mission is done, I'm sure the old lady wouldn't mind if we took one more day. Besides, I call the shots here, Kohonamaru-chan."

"That's right, Moegi, rub it in. I swear, I was _this_ close to passing the jounin tests too. The old hag hates me, I swear."

"Pfft, whatever. Admit it, Konohamaru, I'm just a better shinobi than you are."

_Shinobi!_ Haru's eyes flew wide open. There were three other people, one woman and two men, leaning against a tree each. With a quickening of her pulse, Haru noticed that they all wore Konoha forehead protectors and Konoha-style flak jackets. As if they could sense her disquiet, they glanced at her.

Haru tensed when the kunoichi walked over to her side and touched her forehead lightly. "You're awake. You were out for a few hours… what were you doing out there?" It took Haru a few moments to realize that the pony-tailed woman was asking in a concerned instead of accusatory tone. _I don't have my forehead protector… they don't know I'm from Kiri!_ If she was careful, she just might get out of this alive.

One of the male shinobi, apparently the one called Konohamaru, was fixing her with a penetrating gaze. "Where's your family, kid?" he asked.

"Killed, by the Water invaders," Haru replied without hesitation, looking him in the eye. Inadvertently, thinking about her own parents, her eyes began to water. She looked away.

For a moment it didn't seem as though he believed her, but then he asked again, "Do you have any relatives here?"

For a moment her mother's face flashed through her mind, but Haru suppressed the thought and shook her head instead, avoiding Konohamaru's searching gaze. He broke off his questioning to glance at his female teammate, who glared furiously back at him.

The kunoichi crouched down and looked at Haru intently. "Would you like to come with us, to Konoha?" she asked, brushing a stray lock of hair out of Haru's eyes. The shinobi called Konohamaru grimaced in a here-we-go-again expression. The other male shinobi, a bespectacled man, merely shrugged his shoulders and yawned.

Haru was stunned by this unexpected offer. She immediately recognized that it was a free pass into the heart of the enemy's lair. She had no idea what Kaiyou would make of this, whether he was tracking this Konoha team, or even whether he was alive. However, she realized with a rising sense of despair that she didn't really have a choice— these three Konoha shinobi had already seen her face.

Mindful that the Konoha kunoichi was awaiting her response, Haru replied, "Y-yes, I'd be glad to." She gave the kunoichi a shaky smile to conceal the sinking feeling she was getting.

The kunoichi grinned and gave her a brief hug. "I'm Moegi, by the way." Haru muttered her own name by way of introduction.

" 'sup," the bespectacled shinobi said, "my name is Udon. Pleased t' meet you," punctuating his sentence with wet sniffs.

"Konohamaru," the spiky-headed shinobi huffed.

--------------------

With Haru awake, they made much better time, and managed to reach the northern coast by late afternoon. Walking through dense shrubbery, they emerged onto a deserted beach. A small boat bobbed up and down where it was moored, right where they had left it. Personally, Moegi wasn't sorry to leave the Land of Waves. She'd take Konoha over the humid, salty Land of Waves any day.

When they had all boarded the boat, Moegi called out to Udon, who nodded. He made a shallow cut on his thumb and performed a Kuchiyose. With a puff of smoke, a large turtle appeared in front of the boat. Udon threw sturdy ropes over the turtle's shell, and patted it. "Alright, Kame-kun, take us out!"

With Kamemaru pulling the boat, the miles went by remarkably fast. Within an hour, the Land of Waves had disappeared into the horizon. There was nothing but water all around them, and only a lone sea hawk flew high above, its keen eyes no doubt tracking some marine prey.

Moegi glanced over at Haru, slumped near the stern. She was gazing pensively in the direction of the Land of Waves. Moegi went over to sit nearer to her. "I saw you fight the four Water grunts back there," she said softly. Perhaps it was exhaustion and the fading light playing tricks on Moegi's perception, but she thought she felt Haru tense up ever so slightly.

"I was- they needed to die," Haru blurted out harshly. She gripped Moegi's hands in sudden earnestness. "Allow me to learn ninjutsu, Moegi-san!"

Moegi thought Haru's wording to be slightly odd, but didn't dwell on it. After all, despite the completion of the Great Naruto Bridge (or the "Great Tazuna Bridge" as it was more commonly referred to nowadays), a lot of the Wave islands --such as the one Haru came from— were still isolated enough to engender colloquial dialects of their own.

Moegi squeezed Haru's hands reassuringly. "I promise you."

* * *

**A/N: So..... here are the first three chapters of the story "I, Spy". Finally, it's published! Any sort of comments/criticism is more than welcome. =] I'm not quite ready with the rest of the chapters yet, but they are in the works. Stay tuned! Many thanks to Holy Wolf for beta-reading this, your advice has been invaluable.**


	4. Konohagakure

Mizumoto Haru took a deep breath to calm herself. Suddenly she heard a faint hiss. _Now!_ Haru quickly made a hand seal and performed a substitution with a dummy in the corner. A split second later she heard the sound of stone striking cloth from the center of the room where she had been just a moment ago. Haru heaved a sigh of relief. From painful experience, she knew that those hard stone pellets, while not lethal or even very dangerous, stung a lot if it met with flesh.

"Congratulations, Haru, you pass!" Iruka-sensei said, beaming proudly. Haru grinned back at him and exited the exam room after receiving her brand new forehead protector. The Ninja Academy graduation exam was easy, so much easier than in Kiri. Haru felt her elation drop a notch at that thought. She turned over her shiny new forehead protector, looking at the Konoha insignia engraved over her reflection. _This isn't for real… I'm just a mole._

Haru pushed the thought aside. _Focus, Haru._ She turned her attention to the students trickling out from the Academy, trying to recall what she knew about each of them. She wondered which of these people were going to be her teammates. Although she rarely spoke to any of her classmates, she knew all their strengths, weaknesses and fighting styles by heart – memorizing the academic files of her entire class inside out had been one of the first things Kaiyou tasked her with doing when she first arrived.

Just then a familiar voice called out to her, breaking her concentration. Scanning the compound for the source of the voice, she saw Moegi-san waving at her from the gate. Haru brushed her gloom aside, tying the forehead protector around her neck and rushing out to meet Moegi-san.

"Konohamaru and Udon are already at the barbeque place," Moegi-san said. When she first came to Konoha two months ago, she had gaped at the sight of shinobi and civilians alike glutting on ramen and red bean soup and fish cakes and barbecued beef. In Kiri it was mostly fish and more fish, supplemented by a little barley and seaweed from time to time—the poor agricultural lands of the Land of Water and its clammy, overcast weather made planting rice and anything other than a little barley impossible to sustain. It bred hardy people and top-notch shinobi, but their numbers were few, exacerbated by their habit of violent factionalism.

"… progress. My test was-" Moegi-san said, "you're not listening to me, are you?"

Haru snapped out of her reverie and belatedly realized that Moegi-san was talking to her. "Uh, sorry, Moegi-san, what did you say?"

The older kunoichi sighed. "I was saying, back then my test was henge no jutsu. I still remember Iruka-sensei looking peeved with bits of cloths jamming his nostrils… the closet pervert. I later found out that Konohamaru had performed Naruto-kun's orioke no jutsu," she said, chuckling.

Haru raised an eyebrow. "Orioke no jutsu?"

"It's still henge no jutsu, just that he transformed into, well, a sexy woman."

Haru snorted a laugh. "Pfft. You're pulling my leg."

"I am not!" Moegi-san protested with feigned outrage. "Maybe you should ask him to show you."

"Is that a dare?"

The barbeque place was packed on this particular day. Haru was hit by a blast of the fragrance of burning meat and stifling heat. She was relieved when he saw Konohamaru and Udon sitting at a table near a window. There was a barbeque pit in the middle of the table, where half a dozen pieces of beef sat sizzling. Konohamaru was guzzling the steaks with abandon, while Udon had looked up from his book.

"Say, Konohamaru-kun, this book is, uhm, pretty good," Udon said, adjusting his glasses.

"Heh, aye tou yah soh," Konohamaru said, getting flecks of chewed meat all over the fryer.

Approaching the table, Moegi-san said, "That's disgusting, Konohamaru."

Konohamaru swallowed and looked up. "What? It's a work of art! It's a special first edition signed by the great Ero-sennin himself too!"

"Uh, I meant you getting your spittle all over the fryer," Moegi-san said, settling herself down on the chair next to him. Glancing over at the book Udon was reading, Moegi-san made a face. "Udon, you're reading that garbage, too?"

"It's actually quite," -sniff- "a good book…" Udon began.

"What's it about?" Haru asked.

"….that really isn't very interesting, ha ha," Konohamaru said quickly and made a grab for the book. "How was your graduation exam?" he asked, obviously trying to change the subject.

Haru managed a peek at the title of the book nevertheless. "Icha Icha Paradise?"

"It's smut, Haru," Moegi-san said bluntly, with an unmistakable I-told-you-so look on her face. Konohamaru gave her a dirty look, but didn't say anything more as he selected pieces of beef from a dwindling pile and put them on the barbecue pit.

As Haru waited for the beef to cook, she glanced around the restaurant. There were about as many shinobi among the customers as civilians, maybe more. A particularly huge shinobi wearing an archaic style of flak jacket caught her eye. He was happily attacking the food, eating through it with an alarming rate. One of his companions looked supremely bored, twirling some sort of miniature fan about dreamily. His other companion, a scantily-clad kunoichi, picked at her food half-heartedly. The large shinobi didn't appear to notice.

Just then she saw another kunoichi stroll in. Haru instantly noticed her eyes, which were completely milky-white. Haru continued staring at her when she took a seat at the bar counter a few metres away, her back towards Haru. Over the next few minutes, Haru couldn't resist sneaking glances at the kunoichi with the odd eyes, even though her back was turned.

Suddenly she tossed her head and put down her chopsticks. Swiveling her chair around, she turned to Haru and glared at her. "You have something to say to me, brat?" Haru flinched and tore her gaze away. She had heard of the Hyuuga Clan of Konoha and their fearsome, all-seeing eyes before, but she had never actually seen one.

The Hyuuga kunoichi smirked. "Didn't think so." Transferring her eerie gaze to the rest of the table, she said in a more cordial tone, "Hi, guys. Nice to see you." They greeted her warmly in return.

After the Hyuuga kunoichi finished and left, Haru opened her mouth to ask Moegi-san about the Hyuuga, but decided not to. Instead she asked, "You will be my sensei, right, Moegi-san?"

Moegi-san nudged her absently as she chewed on a particularly stubborn piece of mutton. "Of course… whyever not?"

"What? Why?"

"See, Moegi, this is exactly why. You are too attached to the girl. You're going to favour her, which, in a three-genin group, is not good."

"No I'm not! Please, Hokage-sama, you know that I know better!"

The Godaime Hokage sighed and rubbed her temples. "Actually, Moegi, I don't. Being a first-year jounin, you've never mentored a genin team before."

"Look, Hokage-sama, if I can't have Haru in my team, I'd rather not have any team at all!" Moegi said heatedly.

"Fine," Tsunade-sama snapped, "then don't. I'll give your team to someone else. Kiba, for one, has been hounding me for a team for years anyways. Bottom line is, the girl is someone else's responsibility now. _Get used to it._ Dismissed."

"Hag," Moegi muttered lowly.

An eyebrow seemed to twitch dangerously on the Hokage's face. "Excuse me?"

"Uh, nothing, Hokage-sama!" Moegi said, and made a hurried exit. _Damn, that was close._ She hadn't realized that she'd said it out loud. For someone so… _advanced_ in age, the Godaime Hokage was remarkably thin-skinned about any disparaging comment regarding her age or appearance.

"I'll call her whatever I damn well please," Moegi said defiantly to no one in particular. Under her wings, Haru had only barely gotten used to Konoha and recovered from her trauma back in the Land of Waves. Even now Haru still occasionally got a distant, haunted look on her face. Haru would never admit it, of course, and never spoke of it, but she probably still dwelt on her parents' death. In Moegi's mind, Haru was- _and still is!_ - a fierce voice in her head insisted- her ward.

"Moegi! Why so glum?" a voice called out.

Moegi turned and saw Hanabi. Although she was two years younger than Moegi, they were good friends, and had done a lot of missions as chuunin together. But she didn't feel like spilling her woes right now, so she just shook her head and said, "Nothing much. Did you get the team you want?"

Hanabi snorted. "No such luck. I got an all-boys' team, I think."

"Huh. There must have been more boys in this year's class than usual," Moegi observed without much interest. "I don't think I will be taking on a team this year after all."

"What? Why's that? I thought you've always wanted to mentor a team."

Moegi shrugged noncommittally.

Hanabi stared at her. "You never tell me anything anymore," she said. "Like that kid sitting with you guys at the barbeque place, I don't even know her name…"

"That's because you've been away on missions for _months_, I rescued her from the Land of Waves-"

Hanabi suddenly tugged her sideways onto an intersecting street as they reached a junction. "What-"

"My father," Hanabi replied tersely. Moegi managed to catch a glimpse of Hyuuga Hiashi scowling after them from the junction.

Hanabi didn't say a word as they cut through the street. "Hanabi…" Moegi began tentatively.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Alright."

Haru returned to her quarters after a big lunch, feeling sweaty and bloated, but also contented, something she hadn't felt often in Kiri. Her quarters in Konoha were far better than the one she had in Kiri— for one thing, it was considerably larger. For another, it had reasonably dry floors most of the time and a roof that didn't leak when it rained. Not that it rained half as frequently as it did in Kiri. Haru continued her contented musings as she sat on her bed— a lumpy old mattress, but still pleasantly soft and warm.

Out of the corner of her eye, Haru noticed a puddle on the floor a few feet away. _Odd,_ she thought,_ it hasn't rained for a week-_ Haru sat up rigidly in her bed, suddenly feeling very alert.

"Yes, you've finally noticed. You know, if I was an assassin you would have been dead, dead and none the wiser," Kaiyou said as the puddle evaporated into vapor and re-coalesced into him.

"How lucky I am that you're not," Haru shot back sarcastically. "What do you want?"

"My, my, such hostility," her handler clucked sardonically. "I came here to congratulate you on your… promotion, of course. And to remind you of your mission, lest you forget."

"I haven't."

"Good. It would be such an awful bother to replace you, but make no mistake: it will be done if it has to be."

* * *

**A/N: So... here's chapter four! From here on I will be posting one chapter per week, most probably on a Friday or Saturday. Did you like it? Dislike it? Any comments and/or criticism is most welcome. =] Lastly, thanks to HolyWolf for immensely helpful beta-reading!**


	5. The Misfits

Hotaru Shiro tied his brand-new forehead protector onto his forehead and beamed proudly. "Hotaru Shiro, Konoha genin," he muttered. He liked the sound of that. Nodding to himself, he made his way out to where he saw his older siblings waiting for him just outside the Academy compound.

"I knew you'd do it, Shiro-chan," his eldest brother Kasei said, ruffling Shiro's hair, which, like the rest of the family, was a bright crimson.

"Heh, so you passed. Didn't think you could," his sister Sato snorted, looking slightly peeved.

Kasei looked smug. "I bet her that you'd pass. She owes me lunch."

Shiro sighed. _And there I thought he was genuinely happy for me._ He was much younger than them and much less experienced. It resulted in them frequently overlooking their youngest sibling, even on important days like this. It wasn't out of malice -he didn't think it was anyways- but he found it annoying all the same.

"Ah, don't look so downcast. You're a shinobi now! We're going for ramen to celebrate!" Kasei announced.

"Uh, you guys know I hate ramen…" Shiro groaned.

"Oh yeah… maybe we should go somewhere else." Kasei's face split into a smirk. "Somewhere expensive."

"Piss off. Kazuo's waiting for me at Ichiraku," Sato said.

"Fine, fine. But I'm having fermented bamboo and tender venison ramen," Kasei said, grinning. Sato flipped a rude gesture at Kasei, who just laughed even harder.

"So where're Mom and Dad?" Shiro asked Sato.

"They had an urgent assignment so they had to leave immediately. You know how it is," Sato shrugged.

"I guess so."

* * *

Ichiraku Ramen consisted of a large kitchen area in the middle ringed by a wooden tabletop and circular stools. The proprietress, a pretty woman close to forty, had turned the once-upon-a-time tiny roadside stand into a thriving business with a kitchen of fifteen people.

Sato's boyfriend Kazuo waved at them from an empty section of the stall. "Saved you seats," he said jovially.

Kazuo raised an eyebrow at Shiro's forehead protector. "Ah, you passed," he said, giving Shiro a casual cuff on the shoulder. "So who's up for ramen? I'm starving, you guys took forever," he said, to Kasei and Sato.

"Shiro's fault," Kasei said, pointing at him.

"How so-" Shiro began indignantly, but they had sat down and moved on to another topic, so Shiro followed suit. He ordered a simple soy sauce ramen, as did Kazuo and Sato, but Kasei, true to his word, had his ramen with venison and fermented bamboo. Between Kasei making exaggerated expressions of enjoyment, Sato casting dirty looks at Kasei, and Kazuo casting a different kind of dirty look at Sato, Shiro was being thoroughly ignored.

_I __suppose I should be used to it by now..._ he thought glumly, picking at his ramen.

A grimy shinobi plopped down a few empty stools next to him. The sticky, sweaty reek that emanated from him was powerful enough to make Shiro cringe. Shiro wrinkled his nose in disgust and pushed his bowl away. He had lost what little appetite he had. Shiro cast an annoyed sidelong glance at his newfound neighbour. The young man was tall, with blond hair. He was also covered in caked mud and grime, which clung to his orange vest and-

Shiro gaped. Spiky blond hair, orange attire… _That's-_

"Naruto-kun!" the Ichiraku lady called out warmly. "Haven't seen you in a while. Your usual?"

"Yup," the man known as the Konoha Hurricane said happily. "I think I could eat the whole store."

Shiro suddenly didn't mind the stench. "Um…" he tugged at the man's grimy sleeve gingerly. "Are you…"

He seemed pleased that Shiro could recognize him. "Uzumaki Naruto. Yep, that's me, dattebayo."

Shiro's words caught in his throat. Everyone knew how Naruto, at the age of sixteen, had almost single-handed defended the village first against the insidious Akatsuki, and then again against the vindictive wrath of Sasuke the Serpent. In the intervening fourteen years, the legend surrounding the Hurricane of Konoha had only grown. This was the first time Shiro had seen this living legend up close.

Ichiraku-san served up an extra-large bowl of miso ramen. He grinned in almost-boyish glee. "Itadakimasu!" he cheered, before diving into the ramen with gusto.

Naruto had wolfed down three extra-large portions before he stopped, apparently only for a rest as Ichiraku-san seemed to be preparing more frantically. He gave a sigh of contentment. "Hey, did you just graduate from the Academy?"

Shiro was caught unawares by his question. "Huh, uhh, yeah. Yes." He fingered the strap of his forehead protector self-consciously. Unlike Shiro's, Naruto's forehead protector was nicked in many places, and looked a little battered. There was a diagonal gash at one corner of the forehead protector that strayed close to the Konoha leaf. It stood out like an angry welt. "How did you get that gash on your forehead protector?" Shiro asked.

A haunted look came into Naruto's eyes. For a moment he seemed utterly exhausted, his shoulders slumping down. "It's a long story, dattebayo." He slid off his stool and waved at Ichiraku-san to indicate he was leaving. "I'll pay for this some other time, alright, nee-san?"

Shiro blinked, and the Hurricane was gone. He stared at the stool where Naruto had sat, feeling stupid. _Did I say something wrong?_

* * *

Inuzuka Akira's mother smiled with maternal pride as he emerged out of the academy compound, adjusting his newly-acquired forehead protector uncertainly. His mother hugged him firmly. "Look at you."

Akira squirmed away from the embrace, embarrassed. "I'm a big boy now, Mother."

She sniffed emotionally. "Your father would have been very proud."

"Are you?" Akira asked.

"Of course I am, dear, very much," she said. "Come on, let's go home, I made your favourite lunch."

Akira looked up at the sky. He could spot rain clouds converging in the horizon. It was about time, too. It hadn't rained in a week.

* * *

The bloody roof was leaking again. _Drip, drip, drip, drip_ went the persistent rhythm. The sound of rain pattering on the roof made for a forlorn, insistent backdrop. It had been raining for most of the day.

Hyuuga Hanabi tensed in her drunken stupor when she heard a noise from just outside her door.

"Um…" the person outside the door started speaking timidly.

Hanabi scoffed and slumped back on the floor. _Of course. It's her._ She flailed an obscene gesture at the door, and took another swig of wine. "What do you want, Hinata-_sama_?" spitting out the honorific like a curse.

There was a slight nervous pause. "Um, Father says he saw you on the street today-"

"So?" Hanabi snapped.

"So, um… Father sent me to- Father wants to know if you'd come back home…" Hanabi didn't need the Byakugan to know that Hinata was probably tapping her index fingers together, that old nervous tic of hers.

"He sent-" Hanabi choked on a bitter laugh, "how very tactful of him. After all these years, he still doesn't have a fucking clue…"

Hinata sounded on the verge of tears. "Hanabi-chan-"

She was interrupted by the sound of glass breaking as Hanabi flung her bottle hard at the door. "Don't call me that, and go away!"

"You're drunk, Hanabi-chan… u-um, could I at least come in?"

"Don't pretend like you care," Hanabi snarled. "You know as well as I do that the door is sealed with explosive tags. Look, can't you go stalk someone else? Like your… Naruto-kun," she mimicked her sister's inflection, "I'm sure he'd like to give you a good dose of lovin'."

Hinata paced a while outside the door before leaving. Hanabi glared at the door long after the footsteps faded away.

* * *

**A/N: Happy new year to any readers! Comments/criticism/reviews welcome. =] Thanks to HolyWolf for beta-reading.**


	6. Enter Team Six!

_Oct. '10 note: edited and expanded on this chapter and the next_.

* * *

Hyuuga Hanabi woke to sunlight streaming through the hole in the roof. She had fallen asleep on the floor of her quarters with a bottle in her hand.

_What time is it?_ Hanabi's head throbbed ferociously as she sat up stiffly. By the look of the sun outside, it was late morning. Through the haze of a hangover something niggled at the back of her mind, something she had forgotten sometime during her binge. She vaguely remembered Hinata coming by some time last night... After a couple minutes sorting through alcohol-fogged memories, it hit her like a ton of bricks.

_Crap, I'm late._

She was supposed to be meeting her genin team today.

Sidestepping the broken glass on the floor, Hanabi threw on a change of clothes and swilled some water around in her mouth so her breath wouldn't be quite so foul. While reaching for her shinobi tools she noticed the dossier on her table. It was supposed to contain detailed information about all three genin on her team, but she hadn't had a chance to read it up before getting drunk. She had merely glanced through the names on the first page. She shrugged. It probably wouldn't be that important for the first meeting. If Hanabi remembered correctly, Kotetsu-sensei hadn't read up either, and he did okay.

Hanabi arrived at the classroom in the Ninja Academy just as Iruka-sensei was walking out. "Ah, Hanabi. You're late. Go on in, your genin are waiting."

Mildly embarrassed, Hanabi nodded and stepped into the room. There were still six genin left in the room. _Oh, good, I'm not the latest._ "Team Six? You're with me. I'm Hyuuga Hanabi." Two boys and a girl stood up and began to follow her out. Hanabi noted with interest that the girl was Moegi's ward who had been so curious about her eyes at the barbeque place yesterday.

Hanabi led her genin through the streets of Konoha, darting from shade to shade in an attempt to lessen her raging hangover. She had to remind herself to slow down once in a while so her team could keep up. They passed a number of hawkers selling cold beverages as she led her genin through the streets of Konoha. _An ice-cold lemonade couldn't hurt,_ she thought, clasping her hands together surreptitiously.

As they neared the edge of the village, Hanabi could hear the genin begin muttering nervously.

"Damn, damn, she's going to make us go into the Forest of Death-"

"The Forest of _what_?"

In her peripheral vision Hanabi could see the redhead roll his eyes. "Forest of Death, Haru, where-"

"Fine, I get it. Scary forest," the girl scoffed. Hanabi thought she detected a dismissive note.

Hanabi stopped at an open plaza overlooking the Forest of Death. From there the battered Hokage monument was just visible above the various roofs of the village. She hastened into the generous shade of a tree at the edge of the plaza, leaning against it. She was out of the sun for the moment, but the sweltering heat was intensifying her pounding hangover. It made her feel cranky. "Okay, so you guys know the drill. Tell me your names, aspirations, whatever."

The genin looked at one another, not wanting to go first, but eventually the loud redhead stepped forward. A patch of sunlight that shone through a gap in the leaves made his mass of hair appear flaming-red for a moment. "My name is Hotaru Shiro, I'm the fourth child in a family of shinobi." His face seemed to fall ever so slightly at this, before tightening again into a mask of determination. "I aim to be better than my brother and sister."

_Hotaru?_ Now that Hanabi really looked, the resemblance was obvious. _Iruka-sensei, you bastard._ However Hanabi refused to let this affect her composure, and nodded curtly at the girl to begin.

"I am Mizumoto Haru, and my aim is…" the girl seemed to falter a bit, "…to be able to… protect… certain people from harm," she finished blandly, biting her lip. Hanabi narrowed her eyes. Maybe it was just her slightly-off Wave People accent, but Hanabi somehow thought she wasn't being completely candid. Haru stopped biting her lip when she saw Hanabi scrutinizing her.

Hanabi shrugged mentally and turned to the last genin, a scrawny, nervous-looking boy. "My name is, um, Inuzuka Akira. But I'm not- not really- I mean, I don't have a normal nin-dog like, um, the rest of the Inuzuka Clan…" he trailed off.

_So this is the Inuzuka._ Hanabi thought she remembered seeing an Inuzuka on the dossier. He didn't look like one. _Great._ Hanabi thought, clutching her head. "An Inuzuka without a dog, a walking inferiority complex, and a fisherman's kid. Fantastic," Hanabi said waspishly.

There was a second of awkward silence before the three of them protested all at once.

"But I can summon dogs!" Inuzuka exclaimed.

"My father was not a fisherman," Mizumoto snarled through gritted teeth.

"I do NOT have an inferiority complex!" spluttered Hotaru defensively.

Hanabi sighed. "I can see we're going to have a great time together."

* * *

Akira felt like an idiot. He knew he had just made a fool of himself, stammering and stumbling over his introduction. He always did. Hanabi-sensei began to say something. Akira reined in his self-pity and paid attention.

"…now, you will have a physical fitness test," Hanabi-sensei grinned evilly, pointing at the distant stone faces, "by racing to and climbing up the Hokage Monument."

"What, to the top?" Shiro asked in dismay.

"No, only up to Shodai's chin," Hanabi-sensei replied sarcastically. "What do you think?"

"How are we supposed to get up there?" Akira moaned.

Hanabi-sensei shrugged, saying, "That's your problem. You have until noon. By the way," she said with a small smile, "the last person to the top gets sent back to the Academy." With that, she vanished in a poof of smoke.

"You can't do that-" Shiro began, but she had already disappeared. Atop one of the spikes that made up the Sandaime's hair, Akira spied a tiny dark speck sitting comfortably, mocking them. The three genin gaped at the sight. Shiro turned to his teammates. "Wait, she can't do that, can she?" he said apprehensively.

"I don't know… remember Hideki in our class? Wasn't he a year older than us?" Haru said.

"I don't think they do that a lot nowadays… I think she's got to be bluffing," Shiro said doubtfully. But even Shiro himself didn't sound very convinced.

"Then I guess we should get going…" said Akira quietly, zipping up his fur-lined jacket.

The other two nodded in agreement, and the three genin rushed off wordlessly in the same direction. The plaza was intersected by the busy Senju Street that pointed straight towards the Monument. Haru was the fastest. Darting in and out amongst civilians like a fish, she disappeared into the crowd within seconds. Akira was head to head with Shiro until Akira, in a moment of inattention, ran headlong into a decrepit old man. By the time Akira hurriedly apologized and got back on his feet, Shiro was out of sight. He cursed himself for his carelessness as he weaved through the pedestrians. _I'm going to let everybody down again._

Akira wove along Hiruzen Street until a cross junction appeared. The quickest path to the Hokage monument, Akira knew, was through the Suna-style bazaar that sprawled over a few wide streets near the western gate of Konoha. Akira was about to press on when he noticed an exasperated Haru peering at the roadsigns at the junction.

_She must have gone all the way down Hiruzen Street._ Akira knew that the street going in the direction of the Monument ended in a box of high-rise civilian residences about halfway there. He hesitated for just a moment before waving at Haru. "Haru," he called out, pointing in the direction of the market.

Haru blinked in surprise, and then turned away abruptly, shimmying away in the opposite direction. "That's the wrong way," Akira called after her, but she was already gone. Akira shook his head. What was her problem?

* * *

Hyuuga Hanabi smirked as information from her kage bunshin flooded through her mind. It was one of Kotetsu-sensei's favourite tricks. Hanabi was just sorry she couldn't see their faces when the clone dispelled itself, but creating another clone was too much of a bother. She leapt down from the highest spike of the Sandaime's hair, where she had been perching, onto a lower one, where the late morning sun still cast a diminishing shade.

From where she leaned against the Sandaime's hair spikes, she had a vantage point overlooking a large swath of Konoha. From here she could see Hiruzen Street, which started near the Forest of Death as an alley and widened gradually into a permanently congested artery road. It intersected Kage Street a couple of klicks from the Forest. The various lanes that grew like leaves from Kage Street had each been named after a Kage of the Great Ninja Alliance of the Jinchuriki War. They were mostly consumed by the bustling Suna-style bazaar that had mushroomed up in the years of peace. Hanabi knew that place well, having spent plenty of time losing herself in the vast, untidy tangle of stalls after she ran away from the Hyuuga clan residence. She took another sip of the cold lemonade she had been nursing, and banished the unwelcome mental thread. Hanabi opened the Academy reports painstakingly prepared by Iruka-sensei and began browsing through it half-hearetdly, all the while keeping an eye out for her three genin.

In her peripheral vision, Hanabi spotted her genin on Hiruzen Street. The Mizumoto girl was way ahead the other two, who were shoulder-to-shoulder by the looks of it. Mizumoto was adroitly navigating between and occasionally above the many carts and that moved along the street at snail's pace in the center of the wide street. She was soon at the junction where Hiruzen Street ran into Kage Street- and then past it, zipping further down Hiruzen Street with remarkable agility for a new genin. Hanabi shook her head. _What a shame. Wrong way._

Hanabi turned her gaze back towards her other two genin. The redhead was, predictably, barreling through the street with less elegance but great determination, while Inuzuka was working his way through the same crowd even further back.

She abandoned the file after a cursory reading. Down below, Inuzuka had finally reached the junction, where Mizumoto was deliberating after doubling back from the dead-end. She squinted. Was Inuzuka signaling to Mizumoto? She blinked again as Mizumoto fled from the junction, _away_ from the Kage Street bazaar. _What an idiot._ The Hotaru kid took a little scanning before Hanabi found him. He was running through the quieter boulevards of Senju Street, taking the longer but easier route.

Hanabi stifled a yawn. This could take a while.

* * *

Akira vaulted over the table, knocking over a bowl of porridge as he did so. "Sorry!" he said, for the umpteenth time in the last hour. Akira knew the bazaar like the palm of his hand, but it was hard to move fast through the sprawling bazaar without knocking things over. He stumbled on the uneven pavement when he landed. Ahead, he could see the bazaar petering out into a spacious plaza. The carved faces of the five Hokage loomed over the plaza, the stern gazes unwavering.

As Akira stood catching his breath, a dark blur blew past him, barely giving him a brief glance. _Haru,_ Akira thought in dismay. How did she get here so fast? Groaning, he ran after her as she headed for the Yondaime. Shiro was nowhere to be seen. When Akira reached the Yondaime's chin, he brought out a pair of elongated and slightly-curved 'fang' kunai. A special kunai design used mainly by the Inuzuka, it was one of the few things that his father had left him. Finding a small crag slightly over his head, he wedged his left kunai into it and hefted himself up. He used the momentum to slam the fang kunai in his right hand into another small fissure above, and repeated the motion.

Haru, in the meantime, had closed her eyes in concentration. When Akira next gave a quick glance down, he was surprised to see that Haru was _vertically walking up_ Yondaime's chin, albeit slowly. The soft blue glow of chakra emanated from under her sandals. Akira was impressed, but put his attention back to his own climb.

At the Yondaime's lips, Akira rested for a while, bracing himself against the opening between the lips. His arms already ached from the effort. Haru had walked right past him, face screwed in nervous concentration. After a short rest, Akira resumed his ascent.

When Akira reached the eyes, he thought of how strange his ascent was—stabbing into a stone man's 'flesh' in order to climb up his face. "Sorry, Yondaime-sama," he said apologetically to the rock face as he drove his fang kunai into the eyeball of the likeness. No doubt a man such as Yondaime-sama would have approved of his endeavor. Akira fervently hoped that was the case. He wouldn't want a vengeful spirit about, much less a Hokage-level vengeful spirit.

He rested again atop the eyebrows of the Fourth. Haru was there, panting hard and sweating profusely. She looked exhausted and Akira didn't feel much different than she looked. He took out a soldier pill, swallowed it, and felt the strength course back into his limbs. Glancing over at Haru, he took out another one from his pouch and offered it to her. Haru started and peered at Akira suspiciously. For a moment the silence turned awkward and Akira withdrew his hand, feeling foolish. "Only trying to help," he muttered, tucking the soldier pill back into a pouch.

Feeling energized by the soldier pill, Akira started climbing again. A cool wind buffeted him. By now, it was incredibly high up. One misstep and he would go tumbling down to the ground. Akira shuddered and tried not to think about it. A few feet under him, Haru continued walking upwards, though her steps were now slower and more strained.

Akira was relieved when he finally got between the spikes of hair. Although those great stone spires jutted out diagonally into the air like daggers, at least it wasn't the sheer vertical drop the forehead was. As he leant against one of the hair-spikes to catch his breath, he saw Haru making her way up. She had a fiercely triumphant grin on her face as she trudged into the protective embrace of the Yondaime's hair.

The chakra beneath Haru's feet flickered slightly, and she lost her balance.

* * *

**A/N: Cliffhanger! Literally, I suppose. =P Never done that before, so I'm not sure how well it works. Anyways, reviews and comments appreciated. As usual, thanks to Holy Wolf for beat-reading.**


	7. Camaraderie

_Oct. '10 note: edited and expanded on this chapter and the previous one._

* * *

Haru fell.

It all happened very fast. One moment Haru was climbing into the hair of the Hokage's stone face, and the next she was falling. She clawed frantically at the rock for purchase. After what seemed like an eternity, her left hand lodged itself in a small wedge. The sharp jerk caused her pouch of shinobi tools to come loose around her leg and fall away. Shuriken and kunai spilled out of the pouch and tinkled when they hit the ground far below like shattered glass.

Haru's breath came in sharp gulps. She had gained a momentary reprieve, but she felt so exhausted that it was all she could do to keep holding onto the little fissure, let alone get out of this predicament. Haru sucked in a deep breath between gritted teeth, desperately calling upon some untapped channel of stamina.

Just then, Akira's face appeared over the edge. "Haru," he yelped.

A cold fear gripped Haru. _He's going to throw me over!_ "Get back!" she yelled.

Akira's hand reached out, presumably to release her hand from the wedge and fling her off. "Back off! I'm warning you!" she pleaded in panic.

His hand darted out to hers and gripped tight, but instead of wrenching her hand off he held on and began to pull her up. "Give me your other hand!" Akira grunted. When Haru did he heaved hard and Haru found herself sprawled on the side of one of the hair-spikes of the Hokage.

Haru quickly scrambled away from the edge and regarded Akira warily. "Thanks."

Akira was also shaking visibly. "That was a close one," he said, smiling weakly.

She gave a shuddering laugh. "Yeah."

Haru took a deep breath to calm herself. The air never tasted so sweet and clear.

_Nothing like a brush with death to make you appreciate the little things_… Haru thought sardonically, releasing her breath through her nose.

Akira reached into a pouch and pulled out a dull-brown soldier pill. He offered it to her again like he did earlier. "It'll make you feel stronger," he promised. Haru accepted it abashedly. When he first offered it to her, she had thought that he was trying to poison her. In Kirigakure, shinobi pulled no punches against their rivals. It didn't matter if they had laughed together and ate at the same table. War was war.

To her surprise, Haru felt energy flooding back into her tired body after ingesting the pill. She had taken soldier pills before from the supply she pilfered in Kirigakure, but the Konoha version was obviously a lot better in quality. "Where do you buy these soldier pills?"

Akira smiled. "I made these. My mother is a Nara, and she used to work in the medic corps, so…" he shrugged modestly. "I learned a little."

The sun was almost directly overhead now. "Let's go, we're going to miss the time," Haru said.

Akira nodded, and brought out his curiously-shaped kunai again. Feeling energized from the soldier pill, Haru found it much easier to concentrate her chakra. From the head, they made their way up the side of a Hokage with a slash down his stone face; the Sandaime, according to Akira.

They finally reached the top of the Monument after an hour or so, sweating and tired. Shiro was already on the top, grinning down at them. "What took you so long, you slowpokes?" he teased.

"Where did you go?" Haru asked, hoisting herself up the final obstacle.

Shiro's grin grew even wider. "I took the stairs."

Akira's mouth fell open. "You… took the stairs?"

"Hanabi-sensei never said we couldn't take the stairs…" Shiro laughed at their incredulous faces.

"Where is Hanabi-sensei anyway?" Haru said.

Shiro shook his head. "I have no idea. Haven't seen her at all since I came up here-"

As they looked around, something emerged out of the large shady tree's wood grain. It was Hanabi-sensei, sipping a cold drink. She looked lazily at the sky and tossed the rest of her drink. "Not bad. By the way," she asked casually, "which of you guys came last?"

Haru saw Akira and Shiro's faces fall.

"We… we arrived at the same time," Shiro declared.

Haru blinked. Shiro had reached the top way before either Akira or her. Why was he risking his ass to cover theirs?

Akira nodded without making eye contact with Hanabi-sensei. She turned to Haru. Haru was thinking quickly. What should she do? She didn't know how Kaiyou would react to the news that she would be held back in the Academy for an entire year. Haru shook that thought away. Taking a leap of faith, she nodded as well.

"So that's how it is." Hanabi-sensei's pale eyes slid between the three, scowling at them through narrowed eyelids. Then, to their astonishment, Hanabi-sensei's face cracked into a broad smirk. "I think," she said with a faint smile, as if remembering something, "I'm beginning to like you guys."

She spun on her heels and began to walk away. "You guys all pass. We'll start doing missions tomorrow. Be at the Hokage's office at eight tomorrow morning. Don't be late."

Shiro let out a whoop of delight, patting a smiling Akira one the back. Haru breathed a silent sigh of relief. Later, after the initial euphoria had died down, the three genin leaned on the railings on the edge of the Monument. From this vantage point, Konohagakure sprawled underneath. The bustle of the streets did not reach this high up, so it looked almost serene. The view was breathtaking. Haru felt a little twinge of guilt as she remembered her mission, but even that nagging thought did not diminish the glory of the vista.

The new members of Team Six contemplated the panorama wordlessly for a long while. Shiro was the first to break the silence. "I'm starving. Let's go for lunch somewhere," he suggested.

* * *

The tea house was burgeoning with customers, a sizable portion of which consisted of shinobi, specifically the newly-sorted genin. Shiro, Haru, and Akira were only one of the teams there, celebrating their rite of passage. They were sat together on a long wooden table, where they were chatting excitedly about the morning's exploits.

"…the look on Riko's face when she saw…"

"…and then I threw a smoke pellet…"

"…an absolutely _huge_ dog, this big…"

Shiro nudged at Seihoku Hirai from Team Two beside him, who was peering dubiously at a misshapen dumpling. "Didn't your sensei come even later than ours? How come you guys finished first?"

Putting the dumpling down, the dark-skinned boy pulled a face. "That's because it turned out our sensei hadn't really bothered to think up a test at all."

"It was, quote, 'too troublesome', unquote," his twin sister Riko chipped in from across the table. She rolled her eyes. "Just my luck to be landed with a lazy ass for a sensei."

"He's supposed to be really smart, though, remember dad told us about the time he defeated two invincible missing-nin by using his wits alone?" Hirai said.

"When he was only a chuunin, too," the last member of Team Two, Koujaku Yuichi added, nodding in agreement. "I've heard that he's an unparalleled shogi player as well, I'd like to play him sometime."

"Hearsay," Riko sniffed, "anyways all we had to do was to guess which of five clones was the real him."

"Four. And uhh… you guessed wrong." Hirai snickered.

"So did you!" retorted Riko. "Only Yuichi got it right."

Yuichi inclined his head modestly. Riko kept talking. "And then he passed all of us because he said it would be 'too much of a bother' to go back and submit our names back to the Academy," she said, making sarcastic quotation marks with her fingers.

Haru was only half-listening to their exchange. She was mulling over the events of the morning. How had she managed to come off last in the 'race', despite having the advantage of more experience and practice? _I'm better than them. I know I am._

"Why did you keep trying to help me?" she asked abruptly, turning to Akira beside her. "For all you knew Hanabi-sensei would keep her word and send the last one to the top back to the Academy."

Akira was looking embarrassed now, his eyes fixed on his plate. "It- It's a common trick with jounin mentors. Hanabi-sensei wouldn't really have sent only one of us back… usually either the whole team would fail, or the whole team would pass."

"But wasn't Hideki one year older than-"

"Well… yes, but so were Ikari and Ayanami. It's just that they dropped out. They, ah, left before you joined," Akira mumbled by way of explanation. He stuffed the remainder of his bun into his mouth, as if he'd said too much.

Haru bit her lip. "Thanks, anyway," she said vaguely. Of course, now that Akira had pointed it out to her, it made perfect sense. Haru berated herself for not noticing it on her own. Back when Haru first entered the Konoha Academy, Kaiyou had made her memorize the academic files of every one of her classmates. She vaguely recalled those names on Hideki's file, but in her haste failed to attach any significance to them.

_It's always the little details that get to you,_ Haru could almost hear Kaiyou admonishing. _Always._

* * *

Hanabi had no sooner reached the jounin quarters when she was accosted by an anxious Moegi. "So? How did it go? Did you pass Haru?"

Hanabi held up her hands placatingly. "Don't worry. I passed them."

Her carrot-haired friend let out a relieved sigh, stroking one of her ponytails. "Ah, I- I wasn't really worried."

"Wait, how did you know about-"

Moegi smiled sheepishly. "An advantage to being teacher's pet, Hanabi— word gets round to me pretty fast. So, how did your team do? You have to tell me _everything_."

"You're annoying," Hanabi said, but her grin took away the sting of the words. "Come on in. You'll have to wait though, I'm famished." She reached under her door to release the tripwire behind her door, only to be pulled back up by Moegi.

"What, cup ramen again? I don't think so," Moegi said, wagging a finger at her. "You can tell me over dango and tea."

Hanabi allowed herself to be steered away from the door. "Sounds good to me."

The dango stall closest to the jounin quarters, Mitarashi Dango, was only a few blocks away. As such, it was very popular with jounin catching a quick bite before, or occasionally after, missions. On this particular day, however, it was devoid of customers.

"Well," Moegi said impatiently as Hanabi took a bite off the skewer, "how's the team as a whole, for starters?"

"It's a bit soon to say," Hanabi said slowly. She tried to summon what she could remember from her hurried skim-through of their academy files. "The Hotaru kid is a little brash," Hanabi began. She swallowed to buy herself time to think. "…but a quick thinker. The Inuzuka kid is intelligent, but physically far behind the other two. And Haru is clearly the most skilled of the trio-"

"…'but isn't exactly a team player'," Moegi finished for her. She narrowed her eyes. "You're quoting the information packet from Iruka-sensei aren't you? I read it too, you know."

Hanabi flushed. She should have known. "Sorry. I'm not sure what else I can say… they're all a little rough around the edges, but all in all, I could have gotten a worse team."

"Yes," Moegi replied glumly, "you could have gotten a team without Haru."

* * *

"That sounds like Nara Shikamaru all right," Masato Takeo chimed in further along the table in response to a joke. Takeo was a pint-sized boy from Team Nine, another one of the three teams that passed. His height, combined with his loud manner and affable grin, made him look more like ten. He was laughing at some jab at his sensei, Inuzuka Kiba, and gulped down his tea as if it were wine. "You'd get along well with him, eh, Kenzai," he nudged at Himura Kenzai, his snoozing teammate at the corner of a table. Kenzai grunted, lifted a disinterested eye, and went back to his nap.

Akira was quietly nursing his green tea when Hirai craned his neck forward. "Hey, Akira! You're an Inuzuka too, right? How come you don't look like one? I mean, tattoos on your face, a nin-dog, and all that?"

Takeo raised an eyebrow and looked at Akira. "Oh yeah… I never thought of that either…"

The rest of the table turned to Akira to hear his answer, curiosity piqued. Under the weight of so many stares, Akira's confidence crumbled away, "I- uh, I-I'm not sure… well, actually, um…" he sputtered.

Hirai was sympathetic. Reaching over to pat him on the shoulder, he said, "It's alright, man. Take it easy," and changed the subject, though Riko snickered.

Akira sank deeper in his chair, feeling miserable as he listened to Shiro and Hirai's effortless banter. _Great job, Akira. Real smooth._

_

* * *

_

**A/N: Yikes! Between the busy weekend and slow Internet, I totally forgot about this Saturday's update. Sorry! Thanks to all who reviewed/alerted, especiall top, who's been reviewing this since the beginning. Your support means a lot to me. =] Also, there might be no chapter next week, depending. As always, thanks again to Holy Wolf for extraordinarily dedicated beta-reading, without which this fic would be in far worse shape.  
**

**Next chapter: Mission to River Country!**


	8. A Strictly Routine Assignment

_Haru shuddered at the foot of a clump of tall reeds, not only at the cold wind, but at the utter and unnatural silence of the marsh. The mist that shrouded the marsh was still and thick. As Haru cowered where she stood, a sudden cutting breeze blew through the swamp, clearing the fog slightly. The breeze brought with it a slight metallic tang and the din of a battle raging behind the impenetrable screen of mist. "Mother! Father!" Haru cried into the fog, terrified._

Haru awoke with a jolt. She was covered in cold sweat, her hair and clothes clinging to her. She looked around at the familiar sight of her quarters. _Back in Konoha._ She exhaled slowly. Her window was slightly ajar, and she could see that it was misty outside – an unusually cold night in Konoha.

"Bad dream?" a voice said from the shadows.

Haru started, and her hands shot for the kunai by her bed, but a needle flew noiselessly and embedded itself in the mattress between the kunai and her hand, a fraction of an inch from her fingers. Haru stopped dead. "Still so slow, I see." the voice remarked. "You can do much better than that. It's lucky your role in this doesn't require combat."

Haru kept a tense silence, waiting for Kaiyou to say whatever he needed to say.

"Your team will be getting an assignment to River Country-"

"How do you know that?" Haru interrupted.

Kaiyou shot her an annoyed scowl, and tutted impatiently. "Come now, you're hardly the only mole in here. What, did that come as a surprise? You're really not that indispensable. Just do your part, and you'll be rewarded." Haru was forcibly reminded of her dream. Was there really a chance her parents were alive?

"Now listen up, because I will say it only once," Kaiyou said, cutting Haru's reverie short. "You are of less use away from Konoha, but I'm afraid that can't be helped. In any case, keep your ears open for the phrase 'the blackfish has three sets of teeth', at which your response shall be 'its bite must be three times as deadly'."

"Who-"

"A friend, who will identify himself. Also, when the time is right, this friend will pass you a scroll. Bring that scroll back safely." Kaiyou paused. "I don't need to tell you that the seal on the scroll should be unbroken when I get it."

"Just now, my dream, it was-" Haru blurted out abruptly as Kaiyou turned to leave. "I dreamt of the day my parents were ki- …captured." Haru regretted her show of vulnerability as soon as she said it, and lowered her head, looking away.

There was a pause. "I knew your parents once," Kaiyou's voice said quietly after a moment. When Haru looked up, he had vanished into the mist.

* * *

Shiro arrived at the waiting room at the Hokage's Tower to see Haru and Akira already there. Haru seemed deep in thought, as usual, while Akira simply looked bored. Shiro sat down beside Akira as he yawned.

"Where's Hanabi-sensei?"

"Late," Akira said in a tone that said _as usual_.

"As usual," Shiro agreed.

Shiro half-wondered why he came so early himself. A month after they had passed the test, they had done only D-rank missions, mostly small errands from the villagers. The furthest they had gone from Konoha was half a day's journey, and that was to collect common medicinal herbs for the medic corps. Shiro didn't know what he had expected— something more exciting, he supposed. When he said as much to Sato and Kasei, both of them had scoffed. "Don't rush it, Shiro-chan," Sato had smirked.

"I bet it's yet another rich lady wanting her pots scoured or something," he said gloomily.

"It's not," Haru interjected.

"Why's that?" Shiro asked. They stared at Haru, who muttered noncommittally and looked away.

"What does she know?" Shiro muttered to Akira. He shrugged. Shiro leaned against his seat and closed his eyes. Whatever it was, chances were it would be just as boring as their last dozen missions were.

He had almost dozed off when the door to the assignment hall cracked open, and a huge, bear-sized dog sauntered through it, accompanied by an Inuzuka ninja. Takeo, Kenzai and their teammate, the painfully shy Sayuri followed behind. _So that's the famous Kiba and Akamaru_. To a man, Team Nine looked bored.

"Well, at least their assignments are boring too, right-" Shiro began, but saw that Akira was sinking into his seat as if he wanted to disappear in it. "Hey, Akira… are you okay?"

He mumbled something indistinct.

"What?"

Akira repeated, only slightly louder. "I don't think Kiba-san or his dog likes me very much."

Shiro was about to dismiss the silly notion when Akamaru padded in front of them and sniffed at Akira with a mild air of suspicion. Shiro couldn't help but notice that Kiba-sensei was also eyeing Akira disapprovingly.

"Why-"

"I don't have a nin-dog."

"Oh."

* * *

Hanabi narrowly avoided bumping into Kiba and Akamaru at the entrance to the Hokage's Tower. His team was tagging along glumly. "Hey," Kiba said, "you're just in time. Your team's waiting for you." He started to say something else, but seemed to think better of it and shrugged.

Her genin, as always, were already there, so together they trudged into the assignments office. Instead of old Iruka-sensei like most days, a petite woman with a chuunin vest sat behind long desk at the center of the room, half-concealed by stacks of scrolls and documents.

"Ah, Team Six! Guess what," the chuunin said curtly when she spotted them. "I have a mission for you. C-rank."

"Yesss!" Shiro whooped, not even bothering to restrain his glee.

The chuunin smiled thinly but otherwise ignored Shiro's outburst. "It's just a routine escort-and-protect gig, but it should be quite educational for your team," she told Hanabi.

Hanabi groaned. An escort mission meant, almost certainly, an assignment outside Konoha. Since she took charge of her genin, Hanabi had gotten used to hot showers and an actual bed every day. "My team just graduated. They aren't ready for a C-rank job."

The chuunin, unfortunately, seemed unmoved. "The client specifically requested a Hyuuga."

_Oh. One of those._ Once in a while Hanabi got missions like these. While it sometimes made sense in the context of the mission, such as locating a mineral vein, more often than not it was some rich bumpkin deciding that he wanted the services of a member of one of Konoha's elite clans.

Hanabi shook her head at the idiocy. _Why do you care, Hanabi? The money's all the same_. "Let me see the mission dossier," Hanabi said aloud.

The chuunin handed her the dossier absently, already engrossed in another piece of paperwork. Reading it confirmed her assumption. The principals were two young noblemen of the River Country, and Team Six were to escort them from the Fire Country capital to the River damiyo's palace at Kawarashi.

"It says here that the duration of the mission is two weeks," Hanabi said, scowling as she read the rest of the dossier. "The journey from Hoshuto will take a week at most."

The chuunin looked up from her paperwork and shrugged irritably. "Then guard their safety for two weeks. You're a not a genin. Figure it out yourself."

Behind her, Shiro could barely contain his excitement. Akira too, she could see, was grinning meekly, though Haru was her usual stoic self. _All too familiar._ Hanabi smirked as she remembered her own genin days. Truth be told, her brats probably needed this mission. Though Hanabi was coasting along just fine, the genin were beginning to get restless at the unbroken string of E-rank menial chores. Even the relentless training sessions she put them through only slaked their thirst for more challenging assignments.

Besides, Hanabi admitted to herself, it could have been much more troublesome. Kawarashi was the capital city of the prosperous River Country, and unless the noblemen were misers Hanabi at least could probably expect running water and a bed. And, lying between the allied lands of Wind and Fire, River Country was about as far removed from any real action as could be. What was the worst that could happen?

* * *

**A/N: Sorry for the long delay! I've given up trying to write enough for weekly updates, I'll just post chapters as I write them now.**


	9. Setting Off

Inuzuka Kiba strolled aimlessly down the busy street. With Akamaru at his side, people left and right shied away from them. Kiba grinned at the thought. Akamaru was probably the most good-natured dog -nin-dog or otherwise- he had met, but his enormous size often made people nervous.

Kiba looked at the direction of the sun. There was still some time that needed killing. He had time till noon, and, having packed off his exhausted genin early after an intense training session, he had nothing to do. Shino, Naruto, Shikamaru, they were all on missions. Even his sister was out of Konohagakure, treating a pack of Kusagakure nin-dogs that had gotten badly mauled by razor grass.

Here in the prospering heart of Konoha, however, there was no shortage of interesting scents to follow. The ever-present melange of a dozen different foods blended into the smells of human sweat, freshly-shaved wood, cloying perfumes and smoke, all underpinned by Akamaru's familiar scent beside him. After some meandering, Kiba eventually sat down at a sweetmeats stall and ordered a large platter of minced meat. The glare the cook gave him when he fed some of it to Akamaru was withering.

"Hey, I paid for these, didn't I?"

"My cooking is fit for _human_ consumption," the cook said pointedly. Akamaru, oblivious, happily gobbled up the minced meat.

As Akamaru finished the last morsel, he looked mournfully at the cook, his eyes begging for just one more, but the cook must have thought Akamaru's expression threatening, because he turned away stiffly and retreated to the back of his stall. Kiba scratched underneath Akamaru's ears. "Now, Akamaru, you didn't have to give the old man such a fright," said Kiba, chuckling. Akamaru's replying bark was anything but remorseful.

Kiba glanced at the clock on the counter of the stall. _It's almost time._ "Come on, Akamaru, let's go."

Before heading home, Kiba made a detour to the jounin quarters. It was a horseshoe-shaped, double-storied structure, with front doors clinically spaced along the corridors. Kiba thought of Hanabi. As far as he had gleaned from Hinata over the years, Hanabi had lived alone first at the general shinobi quarters, and then at the jounin quarters almost since she became a genin. Kiba didn't think he could stand living away from his family like that. As a jounin, Kiba was also entitled to a room here, but he still preferred the house he shared with his mother and sister. Naruto might tease him about still living with his mother, but Kiba didn't care. It smelt like home.

He stopped at the bottom of the stairs leading up to Hanabi's room. Was she already gone? Kiba grinned to himself. Not likely. In the tradition of Kakashi, Hanabi was not the most punctual of shinobi. Sure enough, presently the door opened, and Hanabi stepped out of the door. Under the sharper scent of explosive powder and alcohol Kiba caught a faint whiff of chrysanthemum. He sucked in a sharp breath before he could stop himself. _She smells like Hinata._

Akamaru gave a low whine, his ears drooping slightly. _He smells it too._ He gave Akamaru a reassuring pat and pushed the thought aside. "Don't worry, I don't think you're late yet," he said to her, waving as she descended the staircase.

"I knew that." Hanabi said, punching him lightly in the arm as she reached the bottom of the stair. "Where're your brats?"

"Dismissed them for the day," Kiba replied.

Hanabi glanced skeptically at the noon sun, high in the cloudless sky. "Isn't it a little early?"

"I did chakra exercises with them just now. Turns out that genin have puny chakra pools." On a whim he had challenged his genin to walk on water, but unsurprisingly all they accomplished was to deplete their chakras trying, not to mention getting completely drenched in the process. In retrospect Kiba should have started with the tree-climbing. There would be more bruises, but probably would not have been half as demoralizing. Kiba shook his head ruefully. "It's hard to believe that we were that weak, once." In truth he also had another reason for dismissing the kids early, but he kept his mouth shut for now.

They walked with a leisurely pace towards her rendezvous point, Akamaru padding softly behind them. Kiba was reluctant to ruin the pleasant silence, but he _had_ promised to bring it up. _The things I do for love,_ he sighed inwardly.

He took a deep breath, and plunged. "Why do you live in the jounin quarters?"

"It's pretty close to the Hokage's office, the training grounds and the barbeque place. And I don't have to pay anything to live in it." Hanabi's grin was wry. "I think the question should be, why don't _you_ live here?"

"Well, I go home," Kiba said carefully, "…to my family." Beside him a bit of defensiveness crept into Hanabi's posture, like she knew what was coming.

"You could go home-" he continued when she didn't say anything. "You know, the Hyuuga residence. Um, occasionally." Kiba could feel Hanabi's milky-white eyes bearing on him. It was unnerving, even after all those years as Hinata's teammate. He realized why a heartbeat later. Hinata didn't glare.

"I'm not welcome there."

"Your father _wants_ you to go back, Hanabi!"

"Yea, as a second-class member of the family." Hanabi gestured dismissively. "I can't do that."

"You don't-" Kiba stopped. He had wanted to say _you don't know that_, but he knew that wasn't true. Instead he said, "Your father is bound by centuries of tradition. Sometimes it can be… difficult to change," From everything he knew of the Hyuuga clan, primogeniture was one of its most entrenched traditions. The branch family and the caged bird seal may have been abolished, but the basic principle behind it was alive and well.

"He's the head of the family," Hanabi insisted. "If he cared enough, he could. But he doesn't, and didn't."

"Hinata's pretty upset about this too, you know," Kiba said.

"So? I'm supposed to be happy about that?" Hanabi shot back.

Kiba knew his expression was pained. "I didn't say it was a good thing."

* * *

"Thanks, Katsu-san," Shiro said, pocketing the small roll of black linen that was his 'first-outvillage-mission' gift. Shiro preferred white wraps on his arms, but he appreciated the gesture nonetheless.

Hotaru Katsu patted Shiro on the back so hard that he staggered forward a few steps. "That's no problem. Just a small thing I could do for our warrior, eh?"

Shiro grinned at his uncle. Katsu-san was one of the few people who didn't treat him like a kid. It was a shame that Katsu-san wasn't in Konoha very often – the civilian Hotaru were cloth merchants who traveled between major cities to ply their trade.

Katsu-san ran his hand through his thick platinum mop sheepishly. He had the burly hands and freckly skin of a Hotaru, but he lacked the fiery crimson hair that most people associated with the Hotaru clan, as did all members of the clan's civilian branch. "Well… there _is_ one thing." He handed Shiro a carefully-folded envelope. "When you arrive at Kawarashi, you wouldn't mind delivering this for me, would you? I just came from there, and I won't be back in River Country for a while." Under his freckles, Shiro could see Katsu reddening slightly.

Shiro elbowed his uncle conspiratorially in the ribs. "Fallen in looove, Katsu-san?"

"Shut up, brat." He made to muss Shiro's hair, but he ducked before the larger man could.

"Anyway, I have to go, Dad's gonna kill me if I'm late again," Katsu-san said, picking up his duffel bag. He paused and gave Shiro a wide smile. "I'm sure you'll do one heck of a job, Shiro."

Unreasonably, Shiro felt a twinge of resentment as Katsu-san disappeared around a corner. _Déjà vu._

_

* * *

_

The sun blazed in the sky, occasionally breaking through the canopy in a kaleidoscope of shifting patterns. Haru sat on a tree branch in the shade, taking another drink from her water canister. It made an unpleasantly empty sloshing sound as she did so. She peered into the canister. It was already more than half-empty, but none of the others had even arrived at the mission rendezvous yet. In the months she had begun staying in Konoha, one skill she had not yet mastered was rationing her water intake. When she first arrived, it seemed an odd thing to do—in Kiri water was everywhere, so there was no need to carry it around.

A shuffling directly below made Haru freeze instinctively, but it was only Shiro. He put his backpack down at the base of the tree trunk and slumped down against a protruding root. Raising his arms and head, the boy yawned, but flinched in mid-yawn when he saw Haru sitting casually on the branch.

"Hello, Shiro," Haru said, smirking at his surprise.

"Good grief- Haru. I thought I arrived the earliest."

Haru leapt down from the branch lightly. "Why are you so early anyway?"

"Kasei is invigilating the chuunin exams, and Sato had a '_super-special date_'," Shiro said, putting sarcastic emphasis on the last phrase. He took out a small metal box. "So I packed my own lunch. I'm used to it, I suppose." He shrugged casually, but Haru could see that it bothered him.

"What about-"

"My parents? They're always away on this secret mission or that. It's… it's almost like I have no parents." He kicked at the dust, then winced when he realized what he'd said. "Um… I'm sorry, Haru."

Haru waved his apology away. _My parents are not dead._ "Don't worry about it."

"Oh yeah, Haru," Shiro said, recalling something as he chewed on a cucumber roll. He reached into his backpack again and brought out a water canister. "I thought you might need it," he said, grinning. He tossed it lightly and the water canister landed in Haru's outstretched palm with a solid _thwock_. She took a grateful gulp from the full canister.

"Thanks. Am I that predictable?"

Shiro's grin grew wider. "Every time."

Akira stumbled over the edge of the boulevard ten minutes later, lugging an exceptionally large, bulging backpack. "My mom had to help me pack, and…" Akira gestured at his backpack sheepishly in response to the querying glances Haru and Shiro sent his way. "…you know."

Atypically, they did not have to wait long for Hanabi-sensei, who arrived soon after. Hanabi-sensei always seemed grumpy about one thing or the other, but today she looked especially annoyed. "Team Six, all here then," she said curtly. "Let's move out."

* * *

**A/N: Since the events of this chapter occurs on the same day as the previous chapter I thought it might be better to post this first. I don't have that much more stuff written so it'll be a while before the next burst of chapters. :/ As usual, reviews and comments are appreciated.**


	10. Hoshuto, Imperial City

"I see it! I see it!" Shiro exclaimed as he squinted into the distance, a hand cupped above his eyes to shield it from the afternoon sun. He leapt down from the marker stone he had been standing on and turned to Hanabi-sensei. "That's it, right, sensei?"

With Hanabi-sensei's eyes it was always hard to tell, but Akira knew Hanabi-sensei was rolling her eyes. "Yes, Shiro, that's Hoshuto," she sighed, pointing at the weathered marker stone. It said HOSHUTO 10 KM.

That meant they were still a couple of hours from the capital of the Land of Fire, but the perpetual fumes that hung over Hoshuto was already visible, a vague, vast column of dirty smoke that merged seamlessly into yellowish clouds above like the trunk of a monstrous tree. From Konoha, it had taken Team Six only a day and a half to reach the marker stone. On the way they had encountered a few caravans, and even another genin team returning to Konoha, but by and large the journey had been uneventful.

After perhaps another hour and a half, the dense forest that had flanked them all the way from Konoha gave way quite abruptly to a gentle slope dotted with suburban abodes. Akira had never been to Hoshuto, but he could see that the various books he had read about and set in the capital city did not exaggerate its scale. The city sprawled ahead of them, surrounded on three sides by distant hill slopes that were currently obscured by haze.

"Oh," Haru said softly as she took in the vista. Though she did not say anything, her eyes were wide and Akira could tell that she was impressed, even intimidated by the sheer size of Hoshuto. The Land of Waves was more densely populated than the Land of Fire, but none of its dozen port cities held a candle to Hoshuto in size.

Shiro was less restrained, flailing his arms in excitement. "I've heard sooo many stories about Hoshuto! We'll be staying here a while, won't we, sensei?"

"Only until we find our clients," Hanabi-sensei said evenly. "Which shouldn't take long since we know exactly where they are."

The style of the buildings began to change as they moved further into Hoshuto, becoming more archaic and weathered. They passed a busy market organized around a number of huge stone slabs jutting prominently out of the ground like blunted daggers. They were, Akira knew, remnants of a great curtain wall that had long fallen into disuse as the city burst at its seams and expanded beyond its old boundaries.

"How many people are there in this city?" Haru asked quietly. She had looked unnerved ever since they first entered the city.

Hanabi-sensei didn't seem to have heard, so Akira spoke up. "About million and a half," he said, trying to remember, "I think."

* * *

Haru felt unwell. As Team Six made their way across the vast urban sprawl that was Hoshuto, there were countless workshops and manufactories on either side of the winding main road, belching out continuous streams of smoke from tall chimneys. A faint but unmistakable smell of rotten eggs permeated the air, though the people around them hardly seemed to notice.

More than a few of the workshops, Haru noted with growing unease, were making shinobi tools like kunai and shuriken. The neat rows of newly-forged weapons glinted darkly in the diffused sunlight as they were hung out to cool. Haru had never seen so many shinobi tools as she had seen today in all her years of living in Kiri. _If it came to war…_ Haru shuddered at the thought, despite the torrid heat.

"The smell…" Akira said queasily. Akira did not seem to possess the razor-sharp sense of smell that the rest of his clan was famous for, but according to Shiro all Inuzuka had slightly enhanced smell perception from birth. For once Haru did not envy Akira his bloodline.

Hanabi-sensei exhaled slowly as the shifting wind blew a cloud of dark smoke down from a chimney to buffet the street with the overwhelming stench of rotten eggs. Haru instantly buried her face into her sleeve. _How does anybody live in this shithole?_ She glanced at her teammates to see if it was just her, but Akira too looked like he was barely holding his lunch in, and even Shiro coughed at the stench.

Hanabi-sensei on the other hand seemed unfazed by it. She exhaled slowly, smirking at the way the three of them reacted to the stench. "Don't worry, it gets better. Just keep walking."

True to her word, in another fifteen minutes of the endless manufactories began to thin out, just as the ground began to slope upwards again. The abodes, which in the center of the city had been packed, squalid apartment blocks, became steadily more affluent as they ascended.

As promised the air did improve the further up they went, though the occasional breeze still brought with it the odors of the city center. Presently they came upon a wall that snaked away in both directions. Haru supposed they encircled the top of the hill. As they neared she saw an ornate gate, guarded by two guards with spears and elaborate shields. The guards nodded at Hanabi-sensei when they saw that they were from Konoha.

Inside the walls, the civilians were markedly more affluent than they had seen down below, many of them sporting elaborate hairstyles and elegant garb. There were also more than a handful of covered manses bobbing up and down as they were carried by teams of silent servants. A huge palace loomed over it all, casting a fat shadow on the streets.

Hanabi-sensei led them through the labyrinthine streets with ease, turning left here and right there without hesitation. After a few such turns she turned abruptly into a long narrow alley, with high walls hemming them in on both sides. Without warning she stopped, causing Haru to bump into her.

"Who the hell are you?" Hanabi-sensei said.

Haru was suddenly acutely aware of a sharply-dressed man at the start of the alley behind them. He was standing stiffly still, as if afraid to move. Then Haru saw the glint of a kunai at his throat, as Hanabi-sensei stepped out behind him. The Hanabi-sensei in front of them disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

The man did not tremble, but the bead of sweat that rolled down between his eyes betrayed his nervousness. "You, ah, must be the shinobi we hired to take us to Kawarashi. My companion and I, I mean."

Hanabi-sensei relaxed and withdrew her kunai. "You really shouldn't try sneaking up on shinobi, sir. It's bad for your health."

"Y-yes. Of course. I am Satoshi, of House Kaneda. You must be Hyuuga-san?" he said, pushing his wire-frame glasses up his nose with a supercilious finger. His glance shifted from Hanabi-sensei's pale eyes to the three genin, and scowled. "Who-"

"Hanabi. These are my genin. They will not get in the way."

"We were not aware there would be children tagging along, Hyuuga-san."

"Call me Hanabi," she insisted, shooting Shiro a warning glare as the latter opened his mouth to protest. "And these brats are shinobi, sir."

"Right." Satoshi looked unhappy, but seemed to decide not to push the matter. "Daisuke-sama is waiting at the Imperial Inn. Please follow me."

The Imperial Inn was a small but luxurious establishment in the shadow of the palace. They found Satoshi's companion in one of the partitioned dining rooms. Satoshi rapped lightly on the frame of the door. "Daisuke-sama-"

The nobleman called Daisuke held up a finger, signaling them to wait. There was an awkward moment as he proceeded to vomit into a tall vase. After he was done, he wiped his mouth with a napkin and finally acknowledged their presence. "I –hic- apologise. You must be shinobi-Hyuuga-san! T'is good that you're here. I can't wait –hic- to go home. I _hate_ this blasted city. " He poured himself a cup of wine and drained it in one gulp.

Satoshi coughed politely. "It is almost night time outside, Daisuke-sama."

"Is it?" He shrugged and waved dismissively. "Well first thing tomorrow then!"

Hanabi-sensei nodded. "Fine with me."

* * *

"Satoshi-sama."

Satoshi stopped and looked over his shoulder to Hanabi. "Yes?" Outside the dining rooms, the hallways were almost dark, illuminated only by the light that suffused through the rice paper windows. The shadows made his face appear even gaunter than in daylight.

"Our contract lasts for two weeks. I'm sure you know that it doesn't take that long to reach Kawarashi."

"Daisuke-sama took out the contract, Hanabi-san. I suggest you take this up with him."

"Something tells me you're the decision-making one of the pair."

A small smile made the side of Satoshi's mouth twitch. "I should like to think so, despite my… inferior social position." He pushed his glasses up his nose again. "I would be much obliged if you do not bring up this particular observation in Daisuke-sama's presence. His Lordship is a prickly man."

"Sure, it's nothing to me." Hanabi shrugged. "You haven't answered my question."

Satoshi's dark eyes bore into Hanabi's pale ones for a few heartbeats before he grimaced. "Assassins," he conceded, licking his lips. "We fear there may be assassins in Kawarashi, shinobi-san."

* * *

**A/N: Sorry, I know that it's dull, but it's necessary set-up to the rest of the story, which I'm (slowly) working towards. Stay tuned, and, as always, reviews and criticism are much appreciated. :]**


	11. Fishes in the Slipstream

"Checkmate," Daisuke said with a broad grin as he set the wooden shogi piece down. "I win again, Toshi."

His companion raised his hands in sheepish surrender. "Beaten by your superior intellect again, Daisuke-sama." As Daisuke got up from the cushion and sauntered away along the ship deck, Satoshi unfolded his gangly frame to follow. He blinked mildly when he noticed Haru watching from the hurricane deck. "Um, hello," he said.

"Why did you let him win?" Haru had been watching the aristocratic pair play for a few rounds. The shogi they played was a different variant from the one commonly played in Kiri, but Haru had grasped the principles quickly enough, and that much was obvious to her.

"I did no-" he stopped and shot a quick glance at Daisuke's back. "You saw that, eh," Satoshi grimaced. "Sometimes appearances have to be maintained. Smart kid." He gave Haru an uneasy look, then turned away abruptly without a word.

Haru leapt down onto the floor deck and made her way over to the railing and peered over. The lazy swirling waters underneath was a muddy green. As the time allotted for the mission was two whole weeks, they had taken a merchant clipper, which moved at a leisurely pace along the main westbound canal of the Fire Country that fed into one of the many rivers that combed River Country. Given their method of travel, they had made quick progress. After only a day of walking and another two and a half days of traveling on the clipper, they were already nearing Kawarashi. The city was only three hours' journey away, according to Hanabi-sensei. As the canal, then the river, ran parallel to the main artery road, it afforded Haru a glance at the prosperity of the riverlands. Along the canal they passed within earshot of large cities, where a dull background roar and goods-laden merchant wagons on the road hinted at the bustle within the cities.

Haru thought about the assignment Kaiyou gave her. He hadn't deigned to provide her with a description of her contact, so there wasn't a lot she could do but wait for the contact to identify her, given the size of Kawarashi. This uncertainty made her uneasy. What if he was caught by Hanabi-sensei? What if he never even showed up at all? Kaiyou would-

_No._ Haru gripped the rails so tightly she felt the flecks of rust dig into her palms. It would not do to dwell on that. _Focus, Haru._

* * *

Shiro tugged restlessly at the end of the linen wrap on his arm. The skin underneath protested with a dull pain, but it felt better than it had been yesterday. _This is boring_.

He had tried working on his ninjutsu, but after that accident yesterday Hanabi-sensei had forbade him from doing that. Shiro honestly could not see what the big deal was. It _was_ only a small hole. Akira was probably somewhere reading a book, something he had been doing since the nobleman Daisuke gave him access to his collection of Ichi-Ichi-something serials. Shiro had even tried talking to the passengers, but those that did not treat him and his Konoha headband with suspicion plied him with cloying pity, which in some ways was even worse. In any case, Hanabi-sensei had told him to stop talking to the civilians. He snorted to himself. _As if I needed to be told._ Hanabi-sensei had been unusually grim since Hoshuto, though she did not tell them why.

Shiro stood and went outside to stretch his legs. As he reached the upper side deck he spotted Haru near the back of the clipper. She was leaning over the railing, staring at the brackish water as it slipped past.

"Hey Haru, what's up?"

"Do you see the fish?"

Shiro had to squint a little before he saw it, dark silhouettes wriggling alongside the clipper, just under the surface. "Yeah?"

"They're trapped in the slipstream of the clipper. They can't get free."

Haru seemed unhappy about this for some reason. Shiro didn't understand it, but then Haru's moods had always been strange. "Look, you can't feel sorry for them, some guy in the front decks told me that these fish have three rows of teeth! That's gotta count for something." It wasn't exactly what he'd heard –well, he didn't remember exactly- but it should cheer her up.

"Wait, what?" Haru said sharply.

"I said, that's gotta count -"

"No, before that."

"Um, they have three rows of teeth?"

"Its bite must be three times as deadly," she whispered.

"What? Yeah, exactly…"

"I… excuse me," Haru said as she slid away from the railing.

"Wait, Hanabi-sensei said-" Shiro began, but Haru did not seem to have heard him. "Well, not my fault if you get chewed out by sensei, Haru," he muttered.

* * *

Haru scanned the deck furtively, trying to appear inconspicuous. She immediately spotted a scruffy-looking man with hovering around the edge of the deck, eyes darting around nervously. Haru approached him quietly. She looked around for eavesdroppers, but the midday sun had driven most of the passengers indoors, and only a deck hand, back bent with age, was painting the railing.

"You… you know something about the blackfish?"

"What?" The man eyed her with suspicion. "I don't know anything, kunoichi." He began edging away, never turning his back on Haru. She glared at him until he disappeared down a stairway.

Haru heard the old deck hand chuckling under his broad-rimmed grass hat. "You're one interesting kid. You remind me of this fish that lives in the river," he said, spreading paint on the wood languidly, "You really don't want to meet this fish when taking a dip in the river. It's a tiny little thing, but the blackfish has three sets of teeth."

Haru's heart skipped a beat. _That's him! _"Its bite… must be three times as deadly," she replied.

The deck hand did not turn, but Haru could see him peering at her intently from the corner of his eye. Under the rim of his great grass hat, Haru was surprised to see that he wasn't actually old at all. He was a good-looking man who was, Haru guessed, in his early twenties. Only a vertical cleft on his lips marred his striking attractiveness.

The young man continued to study her in silence. "So do you-" Haru began.

"Not here," he said quietly. "Blood Lily Garden at midnight, under the fisherman."

Haru started to protest again, but he shook his head, then ignored her, going back to laconically covering the railing in paint. Gritting her teeth, she made herself walk away. When she looked back at the railing, the deck shimmered with the heat, but the deck hand was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

The distinctive stilt structures of Kawarashi came into view in the distance as the merchant clipper navigated the final bend in the winding river. They would be docking very soon, Hanabi knew. She had only been to Kawarashi once, with her father before the Jinchuriki War. _Long ago._ The port city has no doubt changed considerably since then.

It was time to gather up her genin again. She had tried to keep them together in their cabin on the first day, but that worked out about as well as she'd expected. She knew that the theory was that different personalities complement each other and eventually make for a stronger team, but no one told her how much of a pain trying to get them to start working together in the first place would be. _Were we ever that exasperating to Kotetsu-sensei?_ Hanabi winced. She knew the answer to _that_.

So she had mostly left the brats to their own devices after that. From what Satoshi had told her, the assassins were a palace faction opposed to Daisuke's family. She had judged, correctly so far, that any attempt on his life was unlikely before they arrived at Kawarashi, so they were not in any sort of immediate danger on the clipper. She had kept an eye on Daisuke throughout the journey anyway, just in case.

Shiro, _of course_, had ended up blowing a hole in the wall on the second day while trying to master his clan jutsu. She was surprised to find that he was actually having to figure it out using mostly trial and error. Shiro apparently spent little time with his parents and siblings, who were much older and often went on lengthy missions. Hanabi resolved to give Shiro a few pointers when they got back to Konoha. From what she remembered, the Hoshuto style was not dissimilar in technique to her own clan's Jyuken. _And wouldn't that get the Hyuuga elders' undergarments in a twist._ She was cheered by the thought.

Akira was at the corridor outside their cabin when Hanabi got there. "Sensei!" he squeaked in surprise when he saw her. He had a book in his hand. He was trying to hold it inconspicuously, but Hanabi could see on the spine that it was a volume from that famous series of Jiraiya-sennin that was so popular with male shinobi everywhere. From the ornately-embroidered cover, it could only have come from the nobles.

Abruptly Hanabi noticed that Akira was staring at her breasts. "Akira," she said, folding her arms over her chest, "eyes up here, if you have something to say to me." _Those damn books. _She would need to have a word with Satoshi about giving a twelve year-old access to smut.

Akira quickly averted his eyes, turning crimson to the tip of his ears. "S-s-s-sorry, sensei." He was doing that thing again where he shrank into his jacket like it was a shell. There was something familiar about it that Hanabi could not quite place.

She dismissed the thought for now. Popping her head into the cabin, she saw Shiro lying on a cushion, bouncing a roll of black linen off the wooden wall listlessly while Haru sat cross-legged in sullen silence. "Cheer up, you lot. We're disembarking soon."

* * *

**A/N: Nothing new to say, so I'll shut up. Review and criticise, as always! :]**


	12. Kawarashi

The kunai rasped and rang as they clashed briefly against each other. _I can't keep this up for long._ In a desperate gambit, Akira ducked sideways and flung his kunai past Shiro, but Shiro spun around and threw his own kunai, deflecting the path of Akira's kunai enough that it clattered off the whitewashed wall, a few feet wide of the basket lid that stood in as the target area. Before Akira had a chance to get off the ground, Shiro had thrown a shuriken towards the basket lid on the opposite wall. The soft rustle of Akira's basket lid as the shuriken found its target sounded almost like a sigh.

"That makes three. I win," Shiro said. He slumped down on the grass beside Akira. "That last one with the kunai, that was pretty good." Shiro, Akira knew, was being nice. His gambit with the kunai was the only time he'd even come close to scoring a point against Shiro. Shuriken practice had gone slightly better, but Shiro had, as usual, beaten him handily at close combat too, even with his father's fang kunai. Its curvature meant that blows would slide right off it, which was a great advantage for someone quick enough. The problem was that Akira simply _wasn't_.

"Let's go again," Akira began, but Shiro had doubled over, breathing heavily. He cringed when Akira touched him on the arm. "Shiro, are you okay?" _Did I cut him?_ That seemed unlikely.

"It's nothing," Shiro said through gritted teeth.

That was when Akira noticed the pinkish stains on the white linen that Shiro wrapped around his arms. "You're hurt. Let me see."

Shiro swore as Akira gently peeled away the linen wraps. He felt his breath catch in his throat as Shiro's arm was uncovered. Shiro's arm was a patchwork of angry red, some parts leaking clear fluid while other parts were crusted over with crumbling scabs. As he started on the other arm, it was clear to Akira that it was just as badly burned. "Shiro, what-"

"My clan jutsu," he said tersely. He grimaced when Akira pulled the last of the linen free. He could see where the more severely burned spots corresponded with chakra points.

"The burns look like they were healing. You shouldn't have exerted yourself," Akira chided.

Shiro managed to flash him a cocky grin. "Didn't. Still kicked your ass, didn't I?"

Akira shrugged, forcing himself to smile. "I suppose I'm just not very good." He briefly considered trying to heal the burns with chakra. He quickly dispelled the notion. _Not yet, Mother says._

"Could you bring me the roll of black linen in my bag?"

"O-of course." Akira slid open the screen door that separated the courtyard where they had been sparring from their room. The Kaneda Estate had an air of ruin about it. Akira had noticed some servants peeking from the corridors, but they had scurried off when they began sparring. The nobleman Satoshi had given Team Six a sparse room in his own estate at the centre of the imperial city, though he had insisted on giving Hanabi-sensei her own room – something about 'quarters befitting a lady'. Hanabi-sensei had scoffed at his old-fashioned courtesy, but accepted it anyway.

The black roll was the first thing Akira saw in Shiro's bag. He also rummaged in his own bulging backpack, though it took him a couple of minutes to find what he was looking for.

"Something to apply this on your burns before you put on your wraps again," he told Shiro, handing him a small pot of medicinal salve.

Shiro opened the pot, sniffing at its contents gingerly. "It smells," he complained.

"Yeah, sorry." Akira smiled sheepishly. "I haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet." When properly made the salve was almost odorless. "It works though," he added hastily when Shiro looked askance at him.

Shiro insisted on wrapping up his arms himself, so Akira returned to kunai practice. Drawing another three kunai from the shinobi pouch sewn on his pants, he threw them simultaneously. The middle kunai found the basket lid, but the other two went wide on either side. Akira grimaced. From a standstill he could hit one target well enough. His problem was throwing more than one kunai at once, or while moving.

"Trying throwing it another way," Shiro suggested, tilting his head. "I can't quite put my finger on it, but you're doing it wrong." He winced when he attempted to demonstrate.

"That's… not it." _Snap your arm straight, at the same time opening your palm so that your fingers propel the kunai forward. _Akira had read the kunai-throwing section of the Basic Ninja Projectile Guide so many times that he could almost recite it word-for-word.

Maybe Shiro had the right of it. Akira knew that it was merely one of many effective ways to throw kunai. The way Shiro threw his kunai was similar to how the Guide described it, but Akira had noticed that Haru often favoured another style, and the way Hanabi-sensei threw hers was different again.

Still, there was a reason why this particular style had been selected for the Guide. Akira had experimented with the other styles, but when he did he invariably fared worse. Akira licked his lips and tried again. It was closer this time, two of the kunai striking opposite edges of the basket lid, though the last one hit the wall at an angle and clattered off it.

"I'm going out," Shiro announced, standing up.

"Hanabi-sensei said-"

"Yeah, she also said she'd help me work on my clan jutsu." Shiro threw his arms in the air in exasperation. "I don't see her anywhere."

"Haru-"

"-is _already_ gone. I want to see Kawarashi." There was a petulant edge to Shiro's voice.

Sighing, Akira holstered his kunai. _I'm done for today anyway._ "Can I come?"

"I'm just performing an errand," Shiro said, pulling out a half-crumpled letter from a pocket, "but sure."

* * *

Daisuke slapped his hands on his corpulent thighs in relief. "I'm glad that's done. I am going to get a drink. Toshi, you coming?" Without waiting for an answer, he heaved himself up with a grunt of exertion and ambled out of the room, the wooden boards creaking under his weight.

The gaunt youth nodded solemnly and rose to follow after taking a moment to gather up some scrolls. As he neared the traditional screen door, Hanabi tugged at an unseen wire, and the paper screen slid shut with a snap right before Satoshi's nose. He blinked, startled but not alarmed. "Yes?"

Hanabi kept her face carefully impassive. "Any news on these assassins?"

"I will let you know if anything comes up on my end. In the meantime, stay vigilant."

Hanabi was tired of the charade. It had become increasingly evident since disembarking, but she had been waiting to see what Satoshi would do. "There are no assassins," she said bluntly, folding her arms. "And you know it," she added when he opened his mouth to protest.

His thin lips tightened into a hard line. "There are not," he admitted. Though you would never have agreed to continue with the contract had I told you the truth."

"Probably not. I don't like being lied to." Hanabi narrowed her eyes. "Tell me anyway."

"The whole truth, then," Satoshi said, clearing his throat. "My house has fallen on hard times, and even in the best of times Kaneda was not an illustrious name. And you can see for yourself that mine is not a face to set ladies' hearts afire." His apologetic smile emphasized the angular lines on his face. "So I have little to offer noble ladies for their hand and dowry. But if I were to be seen to be courting a lady of the Hyuuga-"

"-your standing as a marriage prospect would improve dramatically," Hanabi finished for him. So that's why the mission contract had specified a Hyuuga. The Hyuuga were one of Konoha's oldest and most prestigious shinobi clans, and had been a prominent samurai clan before the foundation of Konoha. The striking pale Byakugan of the Hyuuga helped too, no doubt. It also explained why he had been so keen on putting her in court dress, though Hanabi had loudly insisted that she should guard Daisuke and Satoshi in her own more practical clothing.

Hanabi was reluctantly impressed. Most civilians outside the hidden villages themselves held shinobi in superstitious awe. And yet Satoshi had blithely manipulated her into endorsing his marriageability, just by keeping her around. She made a mental note of marking Satoshi as a person-of-interest in her debriefing. Such ambition and cunning was potentially destabilizing.

"What about Daisuke?"

A derisive smirk flitted briefly over Satoshi's long face. "What about him? Did you see how quickly he dozed off just then? I'm practically running his estate for him," the youth said, gesturing at the stack of scrolls he was carrying. "He thinks you've been hired to investigate his steward's embezzlement." From what Hanabi had been able to observe, Satoshi was not lying. Despite his nobility Daisuke appeared to be clueless.

"Will you stay?"

Hanabi leaned back, pretending to think about it. "Give me half again the contract fee," she said, "and we'll stay." It wasn't something Hanabi was proud of, but she needed the extra cash. The bonus from her last A-rank mission had gone into getting a batch of chakra-sensitive explosive granules illicitly obtained from Earth Country's volcanic regions, and she hadn't had much extra cash since then. E- and D-rank missions were easy but they did not pay well. The jounin sensei stipend hadn't helped much.

"Done," Satoshi said without hesitation. When Hanabi raised a querying eyebrow, he shrugged. "Technically Daisuke is your employer. This isn't costing me a thing."

_Should have asked for more._ Despite herself Hanabi could not suppress a grin. "I like the way you think."


	13. Blood Lily

"You know, I only put this paste thing on to humour you, but it really _is_ helping," Shiro said, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice and failing. He flexed his arms experimentally. "I feel good as new."

Akira's ears reddened at the compliment. "It's only temporary," he mumbled, "the important thing is to give your skin time to heal."

Shiro laughed. "Yeah, yeah. You sound like Hanabi-sensei." It felt good to be out of the Kaneda estate. It was a nice enough place, but there was a pervasive sense of drabness to the place that was difficult to shake. The streets of Kawarashi, by contrast, were crowded and lively almost to a fault despite the relentless late afternoon sun.

Shiro took out Katsu-san's letter again, squinting at the front of the envelope. His cousin had at least scrawled a name and address, so that they knew where to look. Asking around revealed that it was along the waterfront, around where the Kawarashi split into a number of smaller rivers. It was quite a long way from the Kaneda Estate, but Shiro did not mind. Being a river port, Kawarashi's streets were filled with strange wares from lands near and far, making the journey endlessly fascinating.

The one that made him most excited though was a roadside stall selling artists' renditions of Konoha ANBU masks. For a while Shiro could not decide whether to get a cat- or wolf-patterned, but in the end he decided on the cat mask. Wearing it made Shiro feel like his father. The illusion lasted only until the next street, where he stumbled on a loose cobblestone and smashed the mask against the hard curb of a teahouse. The laughter of the teahouse patrons rang in his ears as he beat a hasty retreat with half a mask and a fraction of his dignity. To his credit, Akira chose not to comment on Shiro's broken mask. He had bought himself a half-dozen fried fishcakes on a skewer, chewing on them as he followed Shiro through the streets.

The stone pavement underneath their feet turned into wooden planks as they neared the river. Through the slits between the planks Shiro could see only dark wet mud. An endless line of boats bobbing along the riverbank and the accompanying stink of humanity welcomed them to the Kawarashi waterfront. There were a number of fishing boats and slow river barges, but Shiro also glimpsed the folded sails of exotic junks and caravels. Akira could probably tell him where each boat came from, but for the moment Shiro was content just to take in the sight.

They were surprised to find Haru sitting on the edge of an old, unused wooden pier, poring over a flimsy tourist map of Kawarashi. She jerked so violently when Shiro tapped her on the shoulder that she almost fell into the water.

"Guys! Don't-" Haru was almost yelling, but seemed to compose herself. "-don't sneak up on me like that," she finished more evenly.

"Jeez, sorry." Shiro held up a placating hand. "What're you doing, anyway?"

"Sightseeing," she said, turning back to her map. "Do you know where I might find-" she hesitated before continuing, "a blood lily garden?"

The name sounded vaguely familiar. Then Shiro remembered. "Blood Lily Garden? That's the water garden in Daisuke-san's estate, isn't it?" Akira nodded in confirmation.

"That's right beside Satoshi-san's estate," Shiro added.

"Where we're staying, yes," Haru said, suddenly sounding more purposeful. She got back up on her feet, thrusting the map into his hands.

"Hey wait, where are you going now?"

"I've… got to take care of something," she replied blandly, and within a couple of seconds she had disappeared into the press of sailors and merchants that thronged along Kawarashi's long waterfront.

_Could you be any more vague?_ Shiro thought, annoyed. "What's up with that?"

Akira was less concerned. "She'll tell us, when she's ready."

"We're teammates," Shiro insisted. "We shouldn't be keeping secrets from one another."

"You didn't tell us about your arms," Akira pointed out mildly.

Shiro shook his head. "Fine, fine." He scowled. Something was definitely going on with Haru, though. He made up his mind to find out what.

* * *

Akira coughed as giant bellows blasted the acrid fumes of the weaponsmith in their direction. It was unpleasant, though after the dense fumes of Hoshuto this didn't seem so bad.

"Step to the side, will you," a dour voice drawled. "You don't want to get singed when this thing really gets going." The speaker was a heavy-set, middle-aged woman with massive corded muscles and liver-spotted skin.

"Um," Shiro said uncertainly, "are you Miya?"

"That's my daughter," she growled, pointing over at a side-counter, where a younger woman was working a blade with a whetstone. "over there."

When they approached Miya put the blade down and wiped her face on a sleeve. "Welcome to Kawaru's Combat Utensils," she chirped, "how may I help you?"

Beside him Shiro was staring bug-eyed at her. Akira nudged him as subtly as he could.

"Well?" she said with a hint of impatience when Shiro did not say anything.

"Uh, yes," Shiro said, running his hand through his red hair. "I have a message from Hotaru Katsu?"

"It's about time," Miya said with a snort. "I was beginning to wonder if he-" She broke off with a small gasp. "Are those Inuzuka fang kunai?"

Akira realized that she was talking to him. "Y-yes," he said, trying his hardest not to stumble over his words. "Fang k-kunai, yes."

"Can I see them? Pleeease?" At Akira's mumbled assent she spent the next few minutes cooing over them, complimenting the balance and lightness of the kunai. Akira felt absurdly pleased even though he hadn't made them nor done anything to earn it beyond being his father's son.

"So how well does it actually curve?"

"Uh, c-curve? What do you mean?"

Miya broke out in laughter. "You don't know? Look at the curved design. It doesn't throw straight, and is pretty treacherous in close combat… but this kunai design does have one advantage."

"What's that?" Shiro asked.

Miya's grin was knowing. "Next time you practice, try throwing them, hard. If these are authentic Inuzuka kunai…" she laughed again. "You'll see."

Shiro was grumpy when they exited the weaponsmith. "They're nothing special," he said suddenly. "What kind of kunai doesn't even throw straight?" Akira blinked. Was Shiro actually jealous of him? It was a novel feeling that, if he was completely honest, was kind of nice. He gave Shiro an apologetic smile anyway.

* * *

Shiro stifled a yawn as the moon moved languidly from behind a cloud. The elegant porcelain roof tiles felt slippery under his sandals. This is stupid, he decided. What was he thinking when- Shiro sat up abruptly when he detected a flurry of movement in the corner of his eye. A shadowy figure was flitting its way across the tiles. He saw the figure look back briefly before it dropped down the street. _Haru!_

Shiro felt adrenaline and chakra course through his body as he scrambled to follow her. The slipperiness of the roof tiles made him lose his balance, and he fell to the street awkwardly on his arm. He looked up just in time to spot her arm disappear into another street. Ignoring the burning flash of pain that erupted underneath his bandages, he got up and ran after her.

Haru was fast, but Shiro was able to keep up, barely. Every time it seemed as though he was closing the distance, Haru would speed up again, though Shiro kept doggedly at her tail. At one point she disappeared into the muddy bank under the wooden planks of the waterfront, but appeared back up again ten meters ahead before he followed her down, for which he was grateful.

They must have run, slid and leapt over half of Kawarashi before Shiro chased Haru into a blind alley with walls too high and smooth to climb. She stopped and turned around, her face as inscrutable as always.

"Haru," Shiro said between gasping for air, "what the hell?"

"Practice," Haru said, smiling humourlessly. She did not seem at all tired, having run halfway through a city. "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist sticking your nose in my business."

Shiro felt more blood rush to his face. "Friends don't play mind games with one another."

"Friends also respect the privacy of one another," she retorted, folding her arms.

"Then maybe we're not friends," Shiro snapped. Haru made a gurgling sound that might have been a sob, but Shiro was not ready to forgive her yet. He shoved Haru aside, but to his alarm she suddenly _dissolved_ into water, and in a flash only a puddle remained where Haru had been.

_A water clone?_ "Dammit, Haru," he muttered, scowling at the puddle. This was exactly the sort of thing he was talking about.

* * *

Haru leaned against the fisherman statue to catch her breath. Shiro wasn't as slow on the move as Akira was, but ultimately shaking him wasn't all that hard. She had arrived at the garden early, so even though leading Shiro on a wild goose chase and then doubling back had taken a while, she still had some time to set herself up in a convenient hiding place overlooking the meeting place. Not for the first time Haru was thankful that she had made allowance for unforeseen complications. It was a lesson Kaiyou had drummed into her, both as her jounin sensei back in Kiri and as her handler in Konoha.

Haru found a large grove of bamboo a few paces away from the statue and clambered up it. After testing her weight gingerly on the flexible stems she settled into the natural nook that formed, and for the first time since the encounter on the ferry she allowed herself to relax a little. Despite the uncertainty of what lay ahead she couldn't help but feel a twinge of amusement.

She had combed Kawarashi thoroughly everywhere, it seemed, but where she had started out. She had assumed that the 'Blood Lily Garden' was a public venue, but of course it made sense that it was a privately cultivated garden within an aristocratic estate. Being hemmed in by walls was no obstacle for shinobi, but would keep out meddlesome civilians. Haru considered briefly the possibility that Daisuke was working with the deck hand with a lisp, and dismissed it. It seemed more likely that the deck hand was taking advantage of Daisuke's well-known air-headedness.

Haru glanced up at the moon. _Midnight._ A light breeze blew across Blood Lily Garden. The sudden, acute realization that the point of a needle hovered a fraction of an inch over her throat made the hairs on her neck stand on end.

"Hello. I don't believe we've been properly introduced."

* * *

**A/N: It's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry about that. Thanks to brother bandit for the encouragement, and Noel14 for the constant reviews. As usual, appreciate your input and criticism. :]**


	14. Eyes Wide Shut

"Fuck it," Hanabi muttered to no one in particular, downing the steaming cup of wine in one gulp. She gave a little shudder as she felt the pleasant heat of the alcohol snaking down her gullet and diffusing in the pit of her stomach.

Hanabi knew that she probably shouldn't be getting drunk on a mission, but why not? Now that she knew that the whole assassin business was a sham.

Tomorrow she'd get to introducing her brats to chakra exercises, but for tonight she intended to celebrate, and hard. She took the stout bottle of rice wine by the neck and emptied it in two long gulps. She winced as the uncomfortably hot wine went down her throat all at once. "Bartender," she rasped, raising a finger. "One more."

Hanabi was on her third when two voices in argument drifted into the bar with a rustle of the bead curtain covering the entrance. Without looking up from her cup Hanabi could tell that they were young aristocrats. They spoke the same way, from Hoshuto to Kawarashi, an upper-class twang so distinctly full of swagger and arrogant assurance.

"-amoral mercenaries, the lot of them, prostituting their honor for coin. His militia levies are peasant rabble, but at least they've got some sense of loyalty to their daimyo."

The two seated themselves with a flourish on the empty stools beside Hanabi. "At least it means they won't have to cost the daimyo anything. Let's see Kawaru-sama try to justify another –hic- militia tax after that." The speaker thumped at the wooden counter, as if he had just pulled off a great oratorical coup.

"It's child abuse, I'm telling- what?" he snapped when his partner elbowed him hard. He gave a squawk of shock when he turned and saw Hanabi and the Konoha headband resting on her shoulder blades.

"Shinobi-sama!," he said with a nervous chuckle. "O-Of course I'd still prefer that Konoha advises us. Those Suna folks, their methods are too savage." He gave a sudden shudder. Hanabi had no doubt he was thinking of the Demon of Suna. The Kazekage was actually pretty mellow in real life, but she guessed having that kind of dread was useful when you're the leader of a hidden village-

What the nobleman said smacked her in the face like a wet fish, somewhat belatedly. "What?"

"No need to be coy, shinobi-sama. That Satoshi has been telling everyone he can about it since he came back to town."

Hanabi fixed her eyes on the blueblood. "About what?" she repeated.

The remnants of his ruddy drunk glow disappeared as he paled even further. "Th-the new hidden village! Our own hidden village!" he blurted out, his voice shrill with unease.

"Why don't you know about this?" his partner said, eyes narrowed.

Hanabi got up from her stool, and had to grab the counter for purchase as the world seemed to wobble. "That," Hanabi said as she regained her balance, "is a very good question."

* * *

"Hello. I don't believe we've been properly introduced."

Haru froze, not daring even to swallow. There was something familiar in the voice she couldn't quite place, but the needle against her throat was making it hard to concentrate. The needle did not touch her skin, but the point was so close that she could detect the prickly pressure of chakra on her skin.

A ninja, then. Haru exhaled slowly, feeling the breath hiss through her teeth. It was risky, but she didn't see that she had any other choice.

"T-" voice started to speak again, but Haru allowed her body to go slack and slip sideways and down the bamboo branch, vaguely aware of the thin point of a shinobi needle whip past her peripheral vision, missing her eye by barely a hair's breadth. As she landed in the soft mud on one knee she swept her other leg around, her shin connecting painfully with the base of the bamboo. The bamboo cluster shook with the impact, and someone fell out of it, though he – or she – hanged onto the stem with one hand and used the momentum of the fall to aim a kick at her head. Haru held up an arm to block, but the assailant was faster and his foot connected square on her ear, knocking her down.

Haru gasped against the mud and grass, trying to blink away the stars that erupted in her vision. Her hand reached for a kunai but a foot stepped firmly on it.

"Stop," the voice said. "Impressive for a genin, but unnecessary." Haru realized suddenly that the voice had a slight but unmistakable lisp. When she looked up she saw the deck hand from the boat smirking down at her.

"You!"

The deck hand frowned. "Who were you expecting?"

Now that the adrenaline rush was receding Haru felt foolish. "No need for the dramatic entrance," she muttered, taking his offered hand and hauling herself up. She ignored the flash of pain in her leg as she did.

"As I was saying, we haven't been properly introduced. I'm Ran." He flashed Haru a toothy grin.

"Whatever. You have something for me?"

Ran sighed. "Fine." He reached into his shirt. Haru's fingers twitched but she resisted the impulse. If Ran had wanted her dead she'd be dead by now. He took out a nondescript scroll and held it out to Haru, though he did not let go when she reached out to take it.

At that moment there was a sudden rustling of leaves that was too heavy to be the wind. Almost on instinct Haru lifted two kunai from her belt pouch with her free hand and flung it into the shrubbery. There was a yelp, and a rotund figure stumbled out of the carefully-trimmed shrub.

_Daisuke_, she realized with a jolt. The clueless nobleman whom it was their mission to guard. For half a second all three of them froze. Her own expression must have mirrored the wide-eyed astonishment on the nobleman's face.

Then Ran nodded casually at him. "Oh, it's you." He turned back to Haru.

Haru backed away from both of them. "You-"

"You?" There was mild surprise in his tone, but no puzzlement. Daisuke shrugged, eyes darting to the scroll in Ran's hand. "That it?"

When Ran grunted an affirmative Daisuke frowned. "Be more careful. If _I_ could take you by surprise-"

"You didn't," Haru snapped. She disliked surprises. They got you killed.

His jowls quivered like jelly as he shook his head. "In any case, there's no room for mistakes, not this mission. Do you understand?" There was, Haru noted, not a trace of feckless contentment on his face now.

Haru nodded wordlessly. _Better than you. _

"Give it to her," he said to Ran. "Do it now!" It was a tone that brooked no argument. He was visibly relieved when Ran transferred the scroll to Haru, as if a great burden had now been transferred from his broad shoulders. She tucked it securely in a pocket under her shirt.

Ran puffed out his cheeks. "There's my job done." He touched a finger to his eyebrow in a mocking salute. "I'll see you then, nameless kunoichi."

Haru fought a sudden urge to tell him her name. "No," she said instead, "you won't."

His cleft lip made his lopsided grin look like a sneer. "I guess not." There was a sudden whirl of sand. When the sand settled on the grass he had disappeared.

"Shinobi," Daisuke said with a snort, apparently forgetting that Haru was one. "Always with the dramatic exits."

Haru studied Daisuke as he closed the wooden door to the garden and took an ornate lantern off a wall sconce. "Are you aware that Satoshi is playing you?"

They began walking along the neat cobblestone path that hugged the wall of the estate. "What?"

"Your man."

"I know who Satoshi is," Daisuke said peevishly. "As you may have noticed, I am not the moron everybody seems to think I am." His expression softened and regained some of its familiar vapidity, though that may have been a trick of the low light. "That was, of course, always my intention."

"On the boat, he let you win at shogi."

"He always lets me win." A pause. "And I let him let me win."

Haru looked up, and saw that he was smirking. "Why?"

"Because those that think they see everything are the easiest to fool." Daisuke stopped at an ornate steel gate and pushed at it. It slid open noiselessly. From the sliver she could see through the gap, it was a beautiful courtyard, opulent even by Kawarashi standards. "I'll tell you this," he said as he stepped into his courtyard. "Nobody in this sordid game is exactly what they seem. Not Satoshi, not Ran, not me." As she turned to leave Haru could feel his eyes boring into her back. "Not you."

* * *

Shiro picked at a crusty scab at the edge of the bandaged area on his arm absently as he made his way back to Satoshi's estate. He winced as it came off abruptly, dry flakes of Akira's salve floating free along with it. Blood oozed from the raw skin and quickly scabbed again in the night air. He had to resist the urge to touch it again.

He looked up at the street around him. In the heat of the moment earlier, he hadn't thought about remembering the way back. Luckily, there was a half-moon in the sky, and lanterns still flickered at the doors of some homes, illuminating the street in patches. He was fairly sure he knew where he was – he remembered the distinctly carved roof beams from when he and Akira came out earlier - about equidistant from the daimyo's palace by the river and Satoshi's place.

He was grinning at the carved demon on the roof beam when three dark figures flitted across the tiles. They were so quiet that Shiro probably wouldn't have noticed had they not been silhouetted briefly against the moon. Instinctively he dove towards a wall and pressed himself to it, his heart suddenly pounding against his chest. He wasn't a coward but he wasn't sure he could take on three adversaries, especially if they were ninja. After a few seconds of hearing only his own shallow breathing, he craned his neck outwards cautiously.

The fist came out of nowhere, and Shiro felt the punch before he saw it. When the ground rushed up to meet his face he held out his arm, managing to turn his fall into a roll. He gasped at the burning pain that clawed at his arm as he did so, but he couldn't afford to hesitate, and a kunai was in his hand as soon as he came out of the roll.

Facing him were three shinobi – Suna-nin judging by the headbands on their foreheads and waist. Two of them, a kunoichi with a flak jacket and a male shinobi with thick arm guards, were on the street, while the last Suna-nin crouched on the roof. He was dressed shabbily, and there was something wrong with his lips, but Shiro turned his attention back to the two on the ground, a more immediate danger.

The kunoichi had her fists clenched, and the glare she was giving him was venomous. "So it's true," she said. "The rumours-"

"Shut up, Mina," Arm-Guard hissed.

She turned her glare on her teammate. "Why the fuck should I beat around the bush? We all know why we're here."

"You d-"

"Guys," the one on the roof said, cutting the argument short. From the way they both deferred to him it was clear that he was the team leader. He turned his gaze back at Shiro, and Shiro returned his gaze. Team Leader had a cleft upper lip, he could see now, which curled up in a sneer. "Why were you following us?"

Shiro tightened his grip on his kunai. "I- I wasn't."

In the blink of an eye Cleft-Lip was beside him, and Shiro felt the pressure of a needle at his temple. "Why were you following us?" Shiro felt the point of the needle breaking skin, as if to underline the threat.

"I wasn't following you, I wasn't! I was-" Shiro chewed at his tongue. How the hell was he to explain what he was doing?

"Yes?" When Shiro said nothing the pressure against his temple increased, as did the pain. Shiro tried to blurt out that he had been following Haru and then he lost her, but a terrible shrieking drowned him out. It took him a few seconds to grasp that it was coming from him. He tried to move the kunai in his hand, but he found that his arm would not budge.

The pain stopped quite suddenly, and the void it left made Shiro shudder, first with reflexive terror then with relief. He smelled something sharp and realized that he had peed himself. Then he noticed the elegant court lady crouched in front of him. She was powdered, perfumed and dressed in the Kawarashi style. Shiro groaned. He had wanted to meet one of the city's many court ladies at least once before he left, but not under such abject conditions.

She stood up straight, hauling him up to his feet with a firm grip under his armpits. "Can you walk?" she said matter-of-factly. When he nodded, too abashed to say anything, she said, "Come."

Shiro swayed on his spot as she spun around in a flurry of embroidered silk. Scowling at him, she folded her arms in an unladylike manner. "Snap out of it, Shiro."

Shiro looked up sharply. Her voice sounded completely different a moment ago. He narrowed his eyes. It almost sounded like- His suspicions were confirmed when the lady clasped her hands together in a tiger seal, and her irises became white again. The face of the court lady had in the meantime morphed into Hanabi-sensei's.

"But-" Earlier, when Daisuke-san had requested that Hanabi-sensei don court dress within the confines of the River daimyo's palace, she had insisted on remaining in her shinobi-issue flak jacket, declaring that wearing a dress would 'demean Konoha's martial reputation'. Shiro abruptly understood. "Oh."

"Deception and misdirection are a shinobi's greatest tools," she deadpanned.

That was one of the shinobi rules Iruka-sensei had made them memorise in the Academy. Akira could probably tell him which number, but Shiro was never very good with all that.

"Now come on. We shouldn't linger here."

Hanabi-sensei wasn't running, but she was walking in long strides. Engorged veins snaked from her eyes. "What happened to me?" Shiro croaked as he ran after Hanabi-sensei.

"Interrogation genjutsu," she grunted. She inclined her head. "Hope it wasn't too bad."

It was, but Shiro didn't want Hanabi-sensei to think he was soft. "Sensei, does this-" he gestured gingerly at his soiled pants.

Hanabi-sensei stopped, sighing. "It happens." She hesitated. "I can keep a secret."

Shiro felt a rush of gratitude. "Thanks, sensei."

"By the way, don't wander out so late at night." Shiro avoided meeting her pale eyes, but he knew they were glaring at him. "This is not some E-rank errand. Screw up and you might die."

"Right, sensei." Shiro would have protested, but he felt completely drained. He wanted nothing more than to get out of his pants and collapse on his bedroll.

Fortunately Hanabi-sensei seemed to agree. She grilled him on some more details about the Suna-nin, told him to get some rest, then disappeared in a wisp of smoke as they arrived at Satoshi's estate. Another one of her shadow clones, no doubt.

Akira and Haru were asleep as he tip-toed into their quarters as quietly as he could, thankful that the screen doors were not closed. Haru twitched and shuddered as he got some clean pants out of his rucksack, but did not wake. _What are you up to, Haru?_


	15. Hanabi Special!

Hanabi paused in her pursuit as she parsed the information from her shadow clone. She crouched down, leaning against a grimy brick wall. So River Country was setting up a hidden village of its own. And apparently Sunagakure was involved in it, somehow. But why had that worm Satoshi bragged about securing Konoha's help? Surely Tsunade-sama would have briefed her about it if that was the case.

But why would Suna go behind Konoha's back in this? Hanabi was no Academy idealist, she knew that ostensibly allied hidden villages worked covertly against each other's interests all the time, but Hanabi found the fact that the truism also applied to Suna and Konoha hard to wrap her head around. Suna and Konoha had been allied for fifteen years – the longest running Kage alliance ever, by far. She's heard Iruka-sensei mention more than once that the main reason the continent had been at peace since the Jinchuriki War was that no one wanted to fight both Suna and Konoha.

Hanabi clutched her temple as information from another shadow clone flooded through her mind. She could feel the beginnings of a hangover as her liver ran through the alcohol in her system. She had to get moving again, or she'd lose track of her quarry.

She caught up a few minutes later with the Suna-nin in a less reputable part of town, where haphazardly constructed shanties were packed tightly together, the alleys in between overlaid with laundry lines and tarps that jutted out from the houses. Almost casually, the Suna-nin dropped down from the roof down one of the alleys, leaping from balcony to balcony.

Hanabi was about to follow suit when she caught one of the Suna-nin glancing in a mirror. It was furtive and over in a less than a heartbeat, but Hanabi had been watching for it. Hanabi smirked to herself. _Bring it on, fuckers._ Forming a seal again, she made two more shadow clones.

With a terse signal to her clones, they descended into the thicket of crisscrossing laundry lines. Hanabi could not have chosen a more perfect place for an ambush. She tossed a smoke bomb ahead. It bounced off one of the tarps and exploded midair, blanketing the alley in an expanding billow of black smoke.

With her Byakugan Hanabi saw one of the Suna-nin, the kunoichi, leap upwards from a windowsill, trying to get out of the smokescreen. In her peripheral vision she saw one of her clones engage the leader, the one with the cleft lip, fifty feet down the alley.

Grabbing a taut laundry line, Hanabi launched herself at the kunoichi, lashing out at the kunoichi's thigh as she passed by. The kunoichi spun aside, but Hanabi felt her chakra cut through and the small but distinctive buzzing jolt of chakra slicing through chakra. Except it felt like-

The kunoichi landed on the edge of the tiles, probably expecting chakra to anchor her on the roof, but her affected leg crumpled beneath her and she stumbled. Hanabi saw the opening and closed in quickly, tackling her off the roof. As they both fell through the laundry lines there was a sudden jerk as the kunoichi's neck caught in the tangle. Hanabi landed on the cobblestone of the alley a little painfully but managed not to twist an ankle. _One down._

Hanabi first realized something was amiss when the kunoichi's corpse clattered down onto the ground behind her. _Fuck!_ She swept her leg around in a low kick, catching the corpse in the legs. The legs disintegrated into a hundred wooden splinters. As it fell Hanabi delivered a flurry of open-palmed strikes to its torso, and felt the unmistakable texture of hardwood.

_A puppet!_ A rush of information told her that the fleeing Cleft-Lip had dispatched the clone giving pursuit with a well-placed needle. Hanabi hesitated. Why the hell was he running away-?

Her thought was interrupted by a mass of kunai converging on her location. She leapt backwards hastily and surveyed the situation. There were three puppets arrayed in a rough semi-circle where the alley spilled into a wide plaza. They were in the grotesque process of unfolding, with strands of chakra leading back to the other Suna-nin from before, the one with the arm guards.

"Suna Puppet Corps," Hanabi said.

"Thanks for noticing, Obvious-taicho," Arm-Guard said. "You destroyed my Mina-puppet. It was my favourite," he added with a touch of petulance.

"I don't want to fight," Hanabi said.

"Neither do I. But you appear to have stumbled onto something you were not supposed to see." The steady ticking of the puppets stopped as abruptly as they began as the last deadly implement clicked into place. "So now, unfortunately, you have to die. I'm sorry," he added. From the predatory smile on his face, it was a lie.

Hanabi hadn't fought a puppeteer since her chuunin exam, but she still remembered Kotesu-sensei's advice. Cut the strings, and the puppets fall useless. As Hanabi carefully stepped in the direction of the chakra strands, they rippled and whipped away.

"Do you think I'm stupid, Hyuuga? I'm familiar with your technique." The corners of Arm-Guard's mouth curled up in a snarl. "In fact, I've killed one of your clansmen. How does that make you feel?"

"Like I give a shit." _This could get messy._ As she considered her options, Arm-Guard made his move. With a flick of his wrists, hidden compartments on the puppets opened up and spat a number of projectiles. Hanabi dodged the kunai and shuriken easily, but did not notice the needles until they were feet away, and one of them ripped her sleeve and grazed her forearm.

Hanabi sucked at her wound and spat out the poison, running along a wall. Arm-Guard gave her no reprieve, projectiles glancing off the brick mere inches behind her feet. She spotted a half-finished building on the other side of the plaza, covered with struts and planks. A construction site. _Perfect._ She tossed a couple of flash tagged kunai his direction, which bought her the second-long opening she needed to leap off the wall and begin running across the plaza in an erratic zig-zag pattern.

In her peripheral vision, Hanabi saw the puppets gliding alongside her, though it was obvious that Arm-Guard was reluctant to bring them closer. That suited Hanabi just fine. The planks around the construction site made it easy to climb. She tapped a proximity explosive tag to the frame as she vaulted through an empty window.

Seconds later, a satisfying boom rocked the half-finished wall behind her. When she glanced behind her she saw Arm-Guard's livid face as he slid down the pile of bricks that was once a wall. "That was a gift!" he screamed. "I'll fucking kill you!"

He used one of his two remaining puppets to keep the pressure on Hanabi by ejecting thickets of needles and poison canisters, ensuring that she couldn't get close enough to smash the puppets or sever the charka strings. Hanabi ran along the edges of the construction site. When a poison gas capsule mushroomed in front of her she blew a gout of flame to clear her path, but otherwise avoided engagement.

"What's the matter, Hyuuga? Too scared to fight a real shinobi?" The other puppet, Hanabi realized suddenly, had been quietly deploying a cloud of smaller caltrop-like puppets, forming a web that was slowly encircling the construction site.

_Done!_ Hanabi pushed herself bodily from the brick wall moments before the puppetlings linked together, completing her entrapment. The large number of fine chakra strands that connected the spiky puppetlings to Arm-Guard's arm guards made the entire construction site look like a giant, deadly loom. Hanabi stopped at the center of the site, catching her breath.

"Checkmate!" Arm-Guard cackled triumphantly from a high wall. "You Hyuuga are all the same. Fight one, and you learn to fight them all."

It was Hanabi's turn to grin. "Who said I was your typical Hyuuga?" Clutching an activation tag between her half-tiger seal, she yelled "Kai!" and for the smallest fraction of a second she could see a yin-yang symbol superimposed on the battleground in her mind's eye, the half-forgotten vestige of training sessions a decade in the past. Then the entire edge of the construction site exploded inwards in a massive, multi-coloured inferno of chakra-enhanced flame. It was the most beautiful thing Hanabi had ever seen, if she did say so herself.

Through the acrid smoke and debris, she spotted Arm-Guard, or what remained of him, half-buried under a pile of rubble. The entire left half of his face had been melted to a slag of blood and bone, and a broken wooden beam protruded through his stomach. His dead unseeing eye was fixed on his impaled torso with a look of utter surprise.

She blew at the smoking activation tag between her fingers, and it crumpled away into ash. "Fire Element, Hanabi Special," she muttered belatedly.

* * *

A sudden noise woke Haru up. When she opened her eyes she saw Shiro on the bedroll beside her, eyes wide open. "You heard that too, right?" he mouthed.

Haru nodded once. Shiro moved his eyeballs in the direction of the courtyard. _In the tree._ Haru nodded again. She couldn't see clearly, but from the mirror on the mantelpiece Haru could make out an indistinct shape in the silhouette of the cherry blossom tree right outside their room that hadn't been there before. Was it Hanabi-sensei? From Shiro's rigid posture he didn't seem to think so. Haru didn't, either. There was a barely masked killing intent rippling from the intruder.

Still lying on her bedroll, Haru signaled Shiro to slide the screen door shut. It meant giving up line of sight on the enemy and alerting him (them?), but it would also deny the enemy line of sight and buy them a few crucial seconds. The moonlight would also make any approaching attacker visible through the paper of the screen door.

On her signal, both genin sprang into action. Haru slid out of her bedroll and shoved Akira awake and pulled out a kunai in a fluid motion.

Akira woke up dazed and confused. "What's going-"

Shiro was about to launch himself at the door when he yanked suddenly at Haru's arm, making her lose her balance and stagger forwards. She saw the blur of a blade coming at her, and felt a gush of pain blossom across the side of her neck. As she slumped onto the floor she realized, detached, that it would have taken her head clean off. Bringing a hand to her neck, it came away wet, and when she looked at her hand it was inky in the semi-darkness.

Then Akira's face, eyes wide with terror, appeared above her, though he looked relieved. "It's not so bad. Didn't cut any important blood vessels. Not so bad." He gave a nervous laugh and began to slather stinging ointment on her wound with shaking hands.

Haru waved him away. "I'm fine. Help Shiro!"

Haru tried to get up, but managed only to sit up partially before a wave of dizziness hit her. Their assailant was a kunoichi, from Suna judging by her headband. Was she an associate, a teammate of Ran's? Once the surprise of the failed ambush had worn off, it was clear that their assailant was a lot more skilled than Shiro. He was barely keeping his own against her, even with Akira's help. The kunoichi was a whirlwind of steel, raining blows on Shiro and Akira effortlessly. Akira cried out in alarm and stumbled backwards as his fang kunai careened out of his hand.

Haru must have blacked out for half a second, as a pair of needles suddenly sprouted from the back of the Suna kunoichi's knee. She gave a surprised yelp, and in the brief opening that created Shiro's kunai opened her throat in a burst of flame. She spun with the force of the blow, her head spinning more freely than her body.

The Suna-nin crashed face-first onto the wooden floor -_felt a renewed terror when she saw a body with the head barely attached. The corpse was lying face down in the muddy water, but Haru felt a pit form in her stomach as she recognized- _Haru yelled and instinctively rolled away from the corpse. For some reason tears were stinging her eyes, and she felt them slide down to the hollow of her ears. She quickly wiped them away, embarrassed, and sat up again. Akira's ointment seemed to have done its work. Haru still felt faint, but at least she wasn't bleeding any more.

"I… I think I've seen her before." Shiro said in a stunned voice.

"What do you mean?" Akira looked faint at the sight of the kunoichi's half-neckless corpse. A wisp of smoke rose from the cauterized wound where a big chunk of her neck disappeared. It made the room smell horribly like barbequed pork.

Shiro grimaced. "She had two teammates with her."

"But how do you-"

"We're still alive," Shiro said, ignoring Akira. "so her teammates weren't with her. Good job with the needles, Haru. It hit her right behind her knee."

_What?_ Perplexed, Haru detached from her waist and rolled open an oilskin, revealing a full set of shinobi needles. "I didn't use my needles."

Shiro shot a look at Akira, whose eyes were widened. He shook his head. "I- I use kunai. Don't have needles."

Haru's heart skipped a beat when she noticed a figure move across the far wall of the courtyard. _Ran!_ The figure stopped, looked back and put a finger to his cleft lips. By the time her teammates noticed and looked in that direction he was long gone.

"What is it, Haru?" Shiro said.

Haru shook her head. "Nothing, just a little lightheaded." That part, at least, she didn't need to pretend.


End file.
